


Ex Magic

by Cheetoh



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26010343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheetoh/pseuds/Cheetoh
Summary: Buffy rescues Spike from the First's cave, only to find that he's not healing like he used to. Betting on the chance that a sire ritual will help put him back fighting at her side, Buffy does a rather dubious spell to call Drusilla to Sunnydale. But she's not the only one of Spike's exes to show up . . .A season seven rewrite that goes AU post 7x11 "Showtime."
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 32
Kudos: 60
Collections: Buffyverse Top 5





	1. Prologue

Not surprisingly, the Sunnydale Train Station was empty at midnight—though, to be honest, most of Sunnydale was empty at midnight now. Years of living on a Hellmouth, and it took the incorporeal manifestation of Pure Evil and cave-vamps before people started to go, “You know, maybe I should stay in after sundown.”

Buffy took a seat on a bench, setting down her crossbow and folding her arms against the chill of the night air as she waited for the arrival of the 12:05 and tried to figure out what one said to a crazy, century-old vampiress who happened to be crucial to the only good plan you had left. And “good” was a stretch.

A train whistle pierced the silence, and a single point of light appeared in the distance, cutting through the fog. As the soft chugging of the engine’s approach filled the air, Buffy took up her weapon again and checked that the bolt was locked and ready. It’s just a conversation aid, she told herself. Because this plan is going to work.

When the train engine squealed to a stop, the breaks whooshing their release, Buffy studied the windows, relieved when she didn’t spot any obvious signs of vampire-induced mayhem. Still, her fingers tightened on the trigger when the door slid open to reveal a woman who really, really needed to leave the Gothic look behind.

“No treats on board,” Drusilla said, clearly out of sorts as she came down the steps, the hem of her long black fur coat swirling around her boots. “Not like last time. And the engineer all locked up tight, candy in his wrapping.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Buffy said. “Sunnydale’s kind of off the tourist map these days.”

Drusilla tilted her head toward the ground, and for a second it was so eerily similar to Spike’s gesture that Buffy felt an unwelcome little tingle of recognition.

“They are scared of the teeth and claws below, nipping toes into little stubs,” Drusilla said then added, coyly, “No pixies whispering in their ear. No Sunshine calling them for what she doesn’t deserve, calling them with the sweat on her thighs.”

There went the hope that the particulars of the spell could remain just between her, Willow, and the evil lamp post. Damn psychic vampires. But on the upside, at least Drusilla being psychic meant that they could skip the awkward conversation about exes and souls and sweaty thigh spells and get right down to business.

“So you know why you’re here,” Buffy said. 

Drusilla shifted into vamp face and begin to circle in her floaty, predatory way. “Didn’t your mummy ever tell you not to take toys if you were just going to break them?”

“One, Spike’s not a toy,” Buffy said, keeping aim on Dru’s heart and ignoring the little wobble of . . . something in her own voice. “And two, one more movement, and I will dust you.” Buffy'd always hated fighting Drusilla, with her loose-limbed lurches and darting strikes and weird thrall thing, oh yeah, maybe she shouldn’t be looking in her eyes.

“Tsk, tsk, naughty slayer,” Drusilla said, stopping abruptly to make a little chiding gesture. “Then where will our broken black prince be?”

“Spike’s not my—” she started, but stopped herself, because, honestly, given all she’d done to get Drusilla here, and what Drusilla clearly knew she’d done to get her here, her arguments were flimsy. 

She decided to cut right to the chase. “Will you help him?”

But Drusilla was cocking her head again, her attention having wandered to the far side of the station. Buffy positioned her body to look, but nothing was there.

“Hey,” Buffy said sharply. “I said, will you help him?”

“I hear music,” the vampiress said, and then she was moving off into the night, disappearing through the gates of the train station.

Drusilla couldn't get far, given the parameters of the spell she'd cast two weeks ago, but this would go easier if she could earn Dru's willing cooperation. Not to mention Drusilla didn't need to go far to cause trouble.

With a sigh, Buffy followed.

This was Spike's only chance.


	2. Chapter 2

_Three weeks earlier_

“We’re almost home, Spike,” Buffy said softly. “Just one more block.”

He’d stopped walking again, his body going limp against hers. Not for the first time, Buffy chided herself for not calling Xander to come pick them up after she’d dragged Spike out of the First’s cave. She hadn’t wanted to deal with Xander’s inevitable comments about letting the evil dead bleed on his upholstery, but that would have been better than trying to get the not-so-walking dead home while her own muscles were still screaming from the fight with the Turkey Chan or whatever Giles had called the ubervamp. At one point she’d tried to just pick Spike up and carry him, and became a little bit fearful when her own strength wouldn't hold up for more than a few steps.

“I texted Dawn and told her to have blood waiting,” she said, shaking his shoulder.

“Bit hates me,” Spike slurred.

That, more than anything, made Buffy realize just how out-of-it Spike was, as despite the death glares her younger sister had been aiming at him ever since he returned from his summer break with a shiny new soul, Spike hadn’t said anything more about that tension since his first comment about Dawn becoming unbelievably scary had fallen flat on its face . . . just like Spike was going to do in two seconds.

“Yeah, well my sister hates a lot of things but she’ll still do what I tell her. Hey,” she said, giving his shoulder a little shake. She felt a little guilty when he winced, but then she shook it again. Spike was like her. Pain. Pain helped you do what can’t be done.

With a groan, he took a few more shambling steps, and a few more shambling steps, until suddenly, finally, they were pushing open the front door of Buffy’s house and collapsing in an undignified heap on the soft, soft foyer rug.

“Gonna sleep here,” Spike muttered into her armpit. “G’night.”

“After the blood,” Buffy said, staring up at the ceiling like a beached starfish. “But then, sure, knock yourself out.”

She actually thought she might sleep there, too. At least until a voice came from the living room.

“Is that the Spike guy? Is he always shirtless?”

Buffy swiveled her head to where the new Potential Slayer—Rona?—was peering down at them with unguarded suspicion: judgement in baggy overalls. You’d think decapitating a supervamp with a wire in front of these girls would earn Buffy a little question-free window, but no.

Reluctantly, Buffy pushed herself up on her feet and faced the crowd that had come from all corners of the house to see what the commotion was. The move made Spike groan and roll onto his back. His eyes were closed. Buffy thought he might actually be sleeping.

“What are those things on his chest?” asked the red-haired Potential who Buffy was eighty-five percent sure was named Vi. “And are they bleeding?”

“They’re ancient Sumerian symbols,” Giles said, stone-faced as he studied the scene from the doorway of the dining room. Giles’s expressions had been pretty doom and gloom ever since he’d shown up at their door a few days ago going “Surprise! It’s time for our seventy-billionth apocalypse,” but was it her imagination, or did it go extra doom-and-gloomy there for a second? She tried to meet Giles’s eyes, but he turned away and went back to rejoin the pages and books he’d scattered all over the table.

Buffy turned to her sister, who was hanging back behind the crowd of Potentials in the living room. The second Dawn realized she was being watched, the naked concern on her face changed to a cool disdain.

“Dawn, can you get Spike that blood?” Buffy asked, snapping into military mode. She’d been doing this more and more of late, and it was starting to grow on her. Military mode meant that she didn’t have to pay attention to Dawn’s loud sigh as she tromped off into the kitchen. Military mode meant that she didn’t have to see Xander’s frown of disapproval when she told him to help Spike get upstairs by whatever means necessary, or wonder if his comment to the Potentials helping him (“Don’t be shy! You will soon be accustomed to moving the beaten bodies of your friends!”) was more biting than sarcastic. Military mode meant that as soon as she made sure that Dawn was on the way up the stairs with warmed-up pig’s blood in a mug, she pulled out the chair next to Giles and sat down.

“Spill,” she insisted. “What are those symbols?”

“Buffy, I’m not even sure yet—”

“We don’t have time to work up a whole research paper any more,” she said. “I need to know what you’re thinking.”

Giles took off his glasses, but instead of polishing them he just rubbed at his eyes. Tired. That was the word that popped into her head every time she looked at him, but military mode meant she squashed it like a bug whenever it did.

“Perhaps you’re right. Very well, then. At least two of them that were drawn—”

“Carved,” Buffy corrected.

“Fine. At least two of them that were carved on his chest are generally recognized to be used in spells and rituals of transference.”

“Okay,” Buffy said. “Transference to what?”

He gave her the look. “That would be the part of the research paper I haven’t yet finished.”

“So wing it. Change the margins, type in size 18 font, whatever.”

“Perhaps based on the timing of the Turok-Han’s appearance—“

Suddenly there was a thump from upstairs, followed quickly by Xander’s curse, a chorus of adolescent shrieks, and one “Dude, that is gross.” Buffy ran upstairs to her bedroom, pushing aside a girl she was seventy-two percent sure was named Chloe to see what was making their noses wrinkle up in disgust.

At first, Buffy was confused: a tousley-haired Spike sitting up in bed seemed like a good thing, a sign of returning strength. But then she saw that Dawn had pressed herself up against the far wall, her face white. The mug of blood was lying at her feet, but most of its contents were spattered over the front of her pale yellow shirt.

“I-It’s not working, Buffy. He can’t drink it,” Dawn said just as Spike was seized by a fit of wracking coughs that sent another spray of red over the bedspread.


	3. Chapter 3

After Buffy succeeded in chasing the Potentials out of her room, she brought the next mug of blood to him herself. And then the next one. When the fourth mug of blood failed to stay down in the same spectacular, blood-soaked fashion, Spike finally put an arm out to stop her from going back down for a fifth.

“Not worth it, Slayer,” he said, voice raw and strained. “Can tell it’s . . . body doesn’t want it.” He offered her a weak smile before he fell back against the pillows. “Just messing up your doilies and stuff.”

Buffy huffed out a strained laugh, still trying to figure out how to deal with the tight knot of panic that had settled in her stomach. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She’d beaten the bad vamp and rescued the good(ish) vamp, and now he was supposed to get better, throw off the First-induced crazies once and for all and have her back again now that they finally had an idea on what they were fighting. That was the plan she had been clinging to. Instead, they just had a new problem to solve, and this . . . hole that she had felt at her side ever since he’d been kidnapped by the Bringers, this hole that she had finally felt closing when she’d found him strung up in the First’s cave in the flickering torchlight, was threating to open all over again.

And it terrified her.

“Maybe it’s just because it’s pig’s blood,” Buffy said. “Tomorrow we can figure out how to get some people blood from the hospital, or maybe even my—”

Spike cut her off with a sharp shake of the head, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Won’t work. Something’s different.”

“Okay,” Buffy said, not missing a beat, “so we’ll figure out what. Did the First say anything to you?”

“That what we’re calling it?”

“It’s what it is. The First Evil. It showed up once before and tried to get Angel to kill himself.”

Spike snorted, then winced. “Good bloody luck.”

Buffy decided to ignore that. “Now it’s apparently decided to take out the Slayer line, and if that ubervamp it raised was any indication . . . ”

Spike rolled his head to look at her. “You killed it?”

“Yeah. But not easily.” Buffy looked down at her hands. “And not before it killed one of the girls.”

Spike studied her for a long moment. “Not sure if what it nattered on to me will help much. Mostly wanted to take a trip down memory lane. Wore Dru’s face most of the time, which is fine by me. Easier to suss out her sometimes than—well, easier than others.”

“Than me?” Buffy guessed. This thing had appeared to her as her mother; so it clearly had no qualms going for broke. She could only imagine the kind of things it’d been saying wearing her face.

Spike looked away to cough, but this time it seemed more for diversion than necessity.

“Well, I’ve already got Giles in research mode,” Buffy said, then tentatively reached out to lightly touch one of the symbols gouged into his chest. “He says these have something to do with spells of transference, and that maybe the ubervamp—“

“It popped out after they bled me over the goat door. Just thought it was waiting there on the other side, but maybe . . .” Spike trailed off in the middle of the sentence, his eyelids flickering shut. He stayed that way for a few moments, still as death, before he shook himself awake. “Maybe came from some mojo. Not sure what they transferred, though. Still here. Still alive.” He coughed. “Of a sort.”

Gripped by a surge of emotion at the word alive, Buffy reached out and squeezed his hand, then quickly felt weird about the gesture and dropped it before he could react. She turned away and busied herself with pulling some of the blankets and sheets off of the bed.

“Do you think you can make it to the shower?” she said.

When she looked back at him, he was staring at her as though she’d grown two heads (well, twenty heads—this was Sunnydale, after all. Multiple-head tolerance was high). The thing was he didn’t really look like he was scared of the multiple heads, just . . . confused.

“I just want to change the sheets,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to have to sleep in this. But if you want to—”

“Yeah, okay,” he said tightly, shaking his head as though to clear it. “Just give us a minute.”

Buffy left to rustle up fresh linens from the washing machine in the basement, half-expecting him to be dead to the world when she got back. But true to his word, he had managed to drag himself to the bathroom and at least turn on the water. _I’ve cleaned too much blood from this room_ , she thought as she stripped the bed and made it anew.

The Potentials had thankfully all gone to bed, and when Buffy tried Dawn’s door to check on her, it was predictably locked. Downstairs, Giles was finishing up a phone call, and based on the frequency of words like “texts” and “theoretically,” Buffy had a feeling it was with one of his old Council contacts. She leaned against the counter and waited, ignoring the perpetual stack of dirty dishes that had graced the sink ever since she started running a home for Supernaturally Stalked Slayerettes.

“Yes, Martin, you as well,” Giles finished before placing the phone gently back in its cradle.

“And how’s old Martin doing?” Buffy asked.

For a second he looked startled to see her there, and then his face went stony again. “Apart from dealing with the sudden death of most of the people he’s worked with all his life, very well, I suppose.”

“Giles—”

“But he was able to shine some insight on why Spike may not be accepting the blood,” he continued as though nothing had happened, grabbing a mug of tea off the counter and mimicking her position. “Those symbols are indeed part of a transference ritual, specifically used to move magical energies from one host to another. Martin believes that the First transferred Spike’s vampire essence to the Turok-Han to raise it.”

“Spike’s still a vampire, though. There’s no way he would have survived that beating if he wasn’t.”

“As far as I understand it, the demon is still animating his body, yes, but the magic that allows that body to heal, that allows that body its more human functions, has been ripped away. The body rejects the blood because there is no need for blood; the magic that uses it is gone.”

“So, okay,” Buffy said, “how do we get the magic back?”

“The only way Martin is aware of is to capture the new vessel and complete the ritual in reverse.”

Panic began to swirl in Buffy’s stomach as she looked down at the thin red line across her palms from where she’d gripped the wire that killed the Turok-Han. “But the new vessel is—“

“Dead,” Giles said, taking a sip of tea. “Yes, that is the unfortunate conundrum.”

Buffy pushed herself off the counter. “So what are you saying? He’s just going to die?”

“We have no real way of knowing,” Giles said, and took another sip of his goddamned tea. “I imagine that not being able to consume blood could have a wasting effect, or he could remain in a, well, a stasis, I suppose.”

Giles was still talking, but Buffy wasn’t listening, because the world had started buzzing. Suddenly, she couldn’t shake the image of Spike’s face when she’d rescued him out of her mind. It had been tender, and filled with awe, and a kind of hope that she hadn’t seen since he’d showed back up here with his soul. He’d looked at her in that way that used to overwhelm her and made her want to turn away, to distract him with rough kisses or dry, impersonal Q & As because she didn’t have anything of that sheer magnitude to give him back.

But back there, in the cave, she’d found that she didn’t want to do any of that. Because there, for the first time in so many months, she’d had her own little flickering flame of hope to reflect back.

Now Giles was telling her that she was going to have to go upstairs and tell him that hope was all a lie. Dead. Kaput.

“. . . But, Buffy,” Giles was saying when she rejoined the conversation, “I think this a sign that we need to refocus our energies on figuring out what the First—”

“No!” Buffy said tightly. “We’re going to refocus our energies on fixing this.”

He paused. “I don’t believe that it is fixable, at least in the short term.”

She started to pace, telling herself to think, think, think. “There have to be other rituals of spells out there—there are always other rituals and spells. You know, you just find the ancient, impossible-to-find thing, shake a gourd, and tie someone up at midnight on a sacred altar and—” She stopped, as an old image popped in her head: of two vampires, tied together while lightning crashed. “Drusilla!”

“Buffy, what . . .”

“When Spike first came to town, Drusilla was all sick and stuff, not healing, and he kidnapped Angel because he was her sire and his blood could make her all well again. So all we have to do is just get Drusilla and bring her here and—”

Buffy stopped when she saw how Giles had narrowed his eyes, how he was looking at her with dawning understanding.

“It can work, Giles,” Buffy insisted.

Giles stared at her for a long moment. “So you would leave Sunnydale to find Drusilla? Leave Sunnydale to retrieve a dangerous vampire on the chance of proving an untested theory?”

His words were calm, but Buffy could tell there was another emotion behind it, just waiting to spring out. Well, screw that emotion.

“It wouldn’t take very long,” Buffy insisted. “She might even be close. Willow could do a locator spell and I could—”

“So let me see if I am truly understanding this plan,” he interrupted. “You will leave Sunnydale, the site of an impending apocalypse, to pursue a mission that will not only bring a dangerous vampire back with you—by force, I assume—but will also leave a house full of vulnerable girls exposed to what seems to be the greatest evil we have ever faced.”

Well, when he put it like that. Still.

“Spike is my best warrior,” Buffy said. “I need him for—”

Giles slammed his cup down on the counter, splashing tea everywhere. “And in war, when your best warrior falls, you find another bloody warrior!” he snapped. “I went along with your plan to defeat the Turok-Han because he was a foe that we needed to see defeated; rescuing Spike was a . . . rather dubious bonus given what I’ve come to understand has happened here over last few months. While, yes, at full health and capacity he could be an ally, this latest result has cemented his status as a liability. And you would see that if you weren’t . . . ”

“Weren’t what, Giles?” Buffy challenged, but then, as his mouth opened and closed like a stupid British fish, she realized that she didn’t really want him to finish that sentence. Grabbing the sponge from the sink and turning on the faucet, she readied herself to attack the pile of dirty dishes.

“Buffy . . .” Giles said from behind her, his voice softer but no more something she wanted to hear right now. “You’re tired. I’m tired. We should both—”

“I need to think,” she said, starting to scrub, and when he tried to speak again she just scrubbed louder.

She continued to scrub as she heard him settle down on the couch to get a few hours of troubled sleep. She scrubbed and she scrubbed and she scrubbed as the last of the house’s residents bedded down for the night and everything was silent.

As much as she hated it, her brain knew that Giles was right, that she couldn’t leave a house full of scared girls to chase after a theory. She knew that going off to find Drusilla wherever she was and bringing her back to Sunnydale was unwise and, frankly, kind of crazy. All sorts of crazy. She didn’t even really remember what the ritual involved—the sire’s blood and some Duvet thingy? And even though the ritual had healed Drusilla without killing Angel, that was more accident than intent. Buffy didn’t mind a Drusilla-less world, but subduing her by force wasn't an easy ask, not to mention that Buffy had really wanted to leave the whole “gleefully feed someone to her sick boyfriend” phase of life behind her.

But what if Drusilla would try to replicate the non-killing version of the ritual willingly? Sure, the last meeting between Drusilla and Spike hadn’t gone so well, what with Spike chaining his ex up and threatening to kill her (idiot), but sometimes distance makes the heart grow help-ier, so that was a thing, right? And besides, for all the grief Spike gave Buffy about Angel, there was a time when he was always yammering on about Drusilla and his grand, century-spanning love. Well, the time was now to prove it.

Giles was right about the risk. But what he didn’t know was that there was a non-brain part of her that was screaming—screaming—that if she couldn’t even fix Spike, she might as well just give up and let evil swallow the world, because she was out of ideas. Done. Kaput. She’d Googled “evil” on her work computer the other day, for God’s sake.

After having finished with the dishes, counters, and refrigerator, Buffy was opening the oven door and crouching down to give it the scouring of its life when she heard a sound from the doorway that made her turn.

Willow was watching her, still in a baggy pair of lavender pajamas. Her friend had already been in bed last night when Buffy and Spike had gotten home, likely wiped out from the big barrier spell, the first one she’d done since . . . well, for a while. Now, Willow was holding a large, brown, old-looking book in her hands—but when wasn’t someone in this house holding a large, brown, old-looking book in their hands?

“Hey, Barrier Girl, you should be asleep,” Buffy said, then looked at the pinkening sky outside the kitchen window. “Wait, what time is it?”

“Early,” Willow said. “I wanted to talk to you before the others woke up. I came down last night to get a snack and heard you talking to Giles. And I wanted to tell you, well . . . there’s a spell.”

Buffy slammed the oven door and stood up, her eyes flying to the book. “To heal Spike?”

“No. Well, I don’t know, maybe there is one out there I just don’t personally know it, and our libraries have been kind of destroyed through fault that is, okay, partly mine and—“

“Will, it’s okay, just tell me what kind of spell it is,” Buffy said gently, not for the first time wondering at this new twitchy version of her friend, who both reminded her of the eager-to-please girl she’d met way back when at Sunnydale High, and yet didn’t, because this girl’s nervousness came from a deep sense of guilt at having almost ended the world instead of a naïve insecurity.

Willow took a deep breath. “Right. So. It’s a spell that could make Drusilla come to Sunnydale on her own. You wouldn’t have to leave, so maybe Giles would . . .”

Buffy held up her finger and went to check that Giles was still sleeping on the couch. Just to be safe, she pulled Willow deeper into the kitchen and started to whisper.

“Or maybe Giles doesn’t have to know,” Buffy said. Maybe he had some points, but he couldn’t keep showing up and expect to dictate what she did and did not do, who she could and could not care about. Seeing that her vehemence had unsettled Willow, though, she backtracked. “I mean, no need to get him involved, since it might not work out.”

“The thing is,” Willow said slowly, “it probably wouldn’t bring just Drusilla, so you’d want to talk to Spike first, and you’d also need to be the one to do it because . . .” She trailed off.

“I'd have to do it because . . .” Buffy prompted.

Instead of answering, Willow took the book and placed it on the counter, face-up, so that the title was exposed in big, gold letters.

 _Sex Magick_.

Buffy froze. “Will, Spike and I aren’t . . . I mean, after everything . . . ”

Willow waved her hands. “No! Eugh! No! It’s not sexy like that—here, maybe it’s less ooky if you just read it,” she said, flipping through the ragged pages until she found an entry towards the back. She pushed it toward Buffy so she could see the bold print that ran across the top of paper: “A Spell to Call Those With Whom You Share A Lover.”

Buffy didn’t know how to react. She and Willow had never really talked about the whole Spike thing, and to be honest, she wasn’t really looking to change that now. She tried to keep her face impassive. “So I do this spell, and . . .”

“Anyone else Spike has slept with will have to come to you,” Willow said, and then there was a beat as she took in the expression on Buffy’s face. “I guess it’s still kind of ooky.”

“Anyone Spike has slept with will come to me and do what?” Buffy managed to choke out.

“Just come to you and check in; you’d take it from there. The history of this spell is pretty fascinating. The witch who made it, Ava Charlebois, was kind of the pioneer of love and sex magic in the eighteenth century until she fell in love with some poophead. So she developed this spell as a way to figure out if he was cheating and with who. We don’t know what happened after that because she disappeared—” Willow cut herself off, as if suddenly realizing that Buffy had gone silent. Growing flustered, she swooped forward as though to grab the book. “You know what, never mind, it was a bad idea. It’s not dark like a lot of other summoning magic, but I don’t really need to be pushing spells on anyone. And the spell’s really intense and emotional and—”

Buffy snatched the book up before Willow could take it and held it to her chest, forcefully enough that Willow looked a bit surprised.

“It’s an option, which I didn’t have before,” she said softly. “So I’ll look into it. Thanks, Will.”

Willow gave a little nod. “If you decide to . . . let me know. Depending on who, uh, might show up, we can strategize if we need to put other protections in place. After the spell yesterday, I’m feeling . . . well, it’s a start.”

“Right. A start.”

As Willow turned and busied herself with making coffee, Buffy looked at the book in her hands.

A start.


	4. Chapter 4

Since no place in Buffy’s house was safe from the prying eyes of mini-slayers, Buffy had decided to throw Willow’s spell book in her bag and take it with her to work, where at least she got paid for dealing with panicked teenagers. And, bonus! Sometimes she could even score a whole hour to herself, free of questions about the impending probability of death and the location of the household’s extra toilet paper.

Still achy from last night’s fight and fearful that she was on the verge of face-planting on her keyboard with loud, comical zees, at lunchtime Buffy decided to grab her sunglasses, steal outside, and make her way to her usual spot high up on the bleachers of Sunnydale High’s football field, where the clang of metal and shouts of noontime practices had often proven their worth when it came to keeping her awake after a long night of slayage.

Noting that the immediate vicinity was mostly clear of students, Buffy took a sip of her monster-sized Diet Coke—lunch of champions and the perennially sleep-deprived—then pulled out _Sex Magick_ to see what this spell to call Drusilla and friends to Sunnydale would even entail. If Principal Wood happened to stroll by, she’d just tell him that she was trying to keep up with what those crazy kids were into these days.

She got as far as the first sentence.

 _Let the man whose lovers you wish to call be the last whose seed you’ve taken into your body and_ —

“Nope!” Buffy exclaimed, slamming the book shut. A group of girls who were eating their lunch on the first row of bleacher seats looked to where she was sitting, startled, so she held up her drink. “It’s uh, not diet.”

After the girls had sniffed and gone back to their lunches, Buffy wondered, not for the first time, why magic always had to be essences and bodily fluids and creepy reptile parts? Why couldn’t it be, like, glitter and cinnamon and perhaps some nice construction felt? Buffy would totally make little felt dolls of Spike’s exes if it meant helping get his vampire energies back, or whatever the hell it was Giles said had been transferred. Harmony’s could be covered in pink glitter, and if Buffy maybe scribbled on Anya’s face for a little too long with black marker while drawing in the eyes well that was just because—

Buffy shook her head and took another hit of caffeine. _Ugh, focus._

Taking a deep breath, she reopened the book and turned to the first page, deciding that she’d work up to . . . that spell . . . and spend a little time getting to know what this Ava Charlebois chick was all about.

It only took Buffy a few pages to realize that Ava Charlebois was mostly about boinking anything that moved. Humans, warlocks, vampires, demons, you name it—Ava was an equal-opportunity boinker, and showed no shame when it came to listing the benefits of sexing up the supernatural, detailing her exploits in lengthy purple journal entries, or providing helpful, line-drawn sketches both of her various lovers’ anatomy and the ideal positions for achieving “the ultimate release of energy.” Had Buffy not participated in her own orgy of extreme Spike-boinking last fall, her cheeks would have been burning, but as it was, she just let her eyebrows inch up with every page, anticipating the moment when all of Ava’s demon-sexing came to its inevitable terrible end.

But it wasn’t the demon-sexing that prompted Ava to root out a cheating cheater via the mystical arts. It was falling in love with a simple human baker named Pierre.

“Seriously?! Pierre?!” Buffy demanded of the book, and then realized that the girls at the bottom of the bleachers were throwing her dark looks and making a show of gathering up their things. But really . . . _Pierre_?

In Buffy’s experience, it was the sex with demons that got you. If sex with humans could get you, too, then maybe she should just go look up that nun again for another informational interview. She was already having a hard time seeing these days how sex left you feeling anything but broken. She was having a hard time seeing how sex did anything but provide the means for two people to break each other.

The clang of footsteps on the lower rungs of the bleachers snapped Buffy out of her thoughts. Dawn was making her way up toward Buffy with long-legged strides and a hamburger-laden lunch tray from Sunnydale High’s cafeteria. Buffy barely had time to open her bag and hide the spell book before her sister was plopping down beside her.

“Diet Coke?” Buffy said brightly as means of distraction, pointing the straw in Dawn’s direction.

“No thanks,” Dawn said, opening her milk carton. “I prefer my lunch to contain at least one food group.”

“Mmm, such standards. So what brings you to this neck of the bleachers? No good gossip in the cafeteria today?” Buffy heard the too-chipper note of deception in her own voice, but she also legitimately wanted to know. She and Dawn had met here for lunch a lot at the beginning of the year, but that had stopped when the Potentials began showing up.

“Something like that,” Dawn said, tearing a few green grapes from a scraggly bunch. “I can only listen to people talking about who got to second base for so long before I get a crazy urge to stand up and yell, ‘There’s a creepy goat seal in the basement and it’s driving us all crazy!’”

“Makes sense,” Buffy said. She stretched her legs out, leaned back, and turned her face up toward the sun. It was nice out here. This was nice. She was just starting to relax into the companionable silence when Dawn pulled one of her patented Awkward Question sneak attacks.

“So does that book you were reading have something to do with Spike?” her sister asked while popping a grape in her mouth.

Damn it, foiled again!

“How—”

“It was old and musty-looking,” Dawn said. “And you won’t read two-month-old back issues of _Cosmo_.” Before Buffy could figure out how to confirm without inviting a new host of questions, Dawn added, softly, “What’s wrong with him? I looked in on him before Xander picked me up this morning and he’s still—he doesn’t look good.”

Buffy lowered her sunglasses and peered at Dawn.

“What? I knew he was sleeping and wanted to check that the blinds were closed. The upstairs smells bad enough without adding eau de charred Spike.” Dawn took a flustered sip of milk. “Why can’t he keep blood down?”

“Giles says the First did something that means he can’t heal,” Buffy said, before giving a loud sigh. “But then Giles is also pretty much Avoido Guy when it comes to brainstorming what to do about it. It’s not really his priority, which, okay, I get—“

“And it’s yours?” Dawn said.

“I’m not just going to let Spike die—or, well, be deader,” Buffy said, sitting up. “Why does this come as such a shock to everyone?”

“Maybe they think it serves him right,” Dawn said.

Buffy glared at her sister, sharp words poised on the tip of her tongue, when she noticed the question in Dawn’s eyes and realized that she was on the receiving end of another patented Dawn tactic: say something startlingly blunt and watch Buffy squirm. Dumb maniacal monks—they couldn’t have made her a nice, sweet, non-diabolically manipulative sister?

“He doesn’t deserve this,” Buffy said quietly. “And I need him. For what’s coming.”

“Right. For backup.”

“Right,” Buffy agreed, then off Dawn’s sly expression. “You can stop pretending you’re not worried about him too.”

“Am not! I was worried about the rug, and . . . and . . . and my favorite yellow shirt is never going to be the same, and . . .”

“Dawn,” Buffy cut her sister off, then hesitated, not knowing if she should say what she was probably totally going to say.

“What?” Dawn grumbled.

“You don’t have to hate him for me,” Buffy said, and as the words left her mouth, she realized how true they were. When Spike first showed up again, Buffy had been so unsure of what she was feeling that she needed the clear-cut hate of her friends and family to keep her feeling balanced, but now . . . now it felt like one more thing she had to work against. “It’s not that things aren’t still complicated,” she continued. “That they won’t and shouldn’t always be complicated—but what happened last year was the very bad capstone to a lot of other bad things that happened between me and Spike, things that I don’t really know how to explain. But I’m dealing with it. I think he’s dealing with it. And I don’t need you to hate him for me anymore.”

Dawn looked stricken, and Buffy suddenly worried that she had gone too far, that she had taken a clearly defined boundary from her sister that a good parental guardian-type person would have left firmly in place.

“That’s not to say that you can’t hate him for you if you want to,” Buffy filled in quickly. “I mean, there are literally millions of reasons to choose from.”

There was a long pause as Dawn studied the tray on her lap and did some sort of complicated hamburger preparation ritual involving pickles and Fritos before taking a bite. “He does cheat at cards,” she said finally, chewing thoughtfully. “And that silver rope necklace of his was pretty terrible.”

“With ya there, sister.”

Dawn waved her hamburger in the air, warming up to this. “Oh! Oh! And when you were dead, he said he’d help me fudge my summer reading assignment on The Scarlet Letter, and then I got an ‘F’ because, guess what? It doesn’t end with Hester Prynne beating up everyone in the village and then setting it on fire.” When she noticed Buffy’s skepticism, she added, “Well, how was I supposed to know?! My sister beats stuff up all the time, so it seemed legit! Anyway, when I yelled at Spike about it, he just laughed his dumb butt off.”

“These are all great reasons. Good work,” Buffy encouraged, leaning back on her elbows again as Dawn continued to detail the various trials and tribulations of being babysat by Spike during the summer that Buffy had been off being dead. Buffy had known that Spike and Dawn had spent a lot of time together then, but she hadn’t realized that it’d been just the two of them for a large majority of weeknights.

“Where were Willow and Tara?” Buffy interrupted.

“I dunno. Willow had summer classes. The library. And then—“

“Xander?”

“If he worked that day, he’d just fall asleep on the couch.”

“Giles?”

“He got squirrely if he had to be in our house too much. Think I just . . . reminded him of things.”

Huh.

“Anyway, Spike also made me watch like three whole seasons of Passions, and then just when I finally decided it wasn’t terrible, boom! You’re back and he stops bringing them over. I still don’t know what happened after Brian and Sheridan sailed off on Beth’s boat,” Dawn said, before taking a final ferocious bite of her sandwich and plopping it back on the tray.

“Feel better?” Buffy asked.

“Yeah,” Dawn said, before her expression went dark again. “But . . . I mean, can I really hate him for any of that? Now that he’s . . . different.”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question?

Luckily, Buffy was saved from having to come up with an answer by the intercom announcing that the second lunch period was over.

“Ugh, I gotta go do math,” Dawn said, gathering up her things, but then paused to look at Buffy, tucking a wing of hair behind her ear. “If there’s anything I can do to help with the Spike stuff, you’ll, uh, let me know, right?”

“Of course,” Buffy said, then felt weirdly at peace as she watched Dawn make her way back down the bleachers. At least she was enough of a parental figure-type person to know better than to mention that her best bet right now for healing Spike was the wacky book of hoo-ha magic currently burning a hole in her bag.

When the field had cleared, Buffy pulled the book back out onto her lap and braced herself as she turned to the final spell. Willow had sworn it wasn’t a sex-sex spell, so wigsome terminology aside, how bad could it really be?

Buffy began to read. When she’d finished, she went back and read it again, certain that she’d somehow misunderstood. But she hadn’t. And maybe that was why her heart was pounding and her brain was making a sound like someone had thrown a fork in a garbage disposal.

Oh hell no.

_______

As soon as Buffy got home that afternoon, she went to find Willow.

“We need to talk,” Buffy said, closing the door of her old bedroom behind her and thanking whatever god was responsible for making all Potentials be elsewhere.

Willow was laying across the bed on her stomach, looking at a fanned textbook, but she quickly hopped up. “I know, I’m sorry, I told them not to, but Giles—”

“I can’t do that spell. I just . . . can’t,” Buffy said. “But I am totally on board with doing another spell to bring Drusilla here. Any spell. Just not that one.” When Willow just blinked at her, Buffy added, “I mean, come on. Did you . . . did you read it?”

Buffy was honestly unsure what answer she wanted to that question.

“Not closely,” Willow said. “As interesting as Ava is for magical theory, she’s never been that useful for me. You may have noticed she’s mostly about the, uh, phallic energy.” Willow looked puzzled. “But I really thought it wasn’t groiny.”

“It is groiny! There is so groin involved!” Buffy took a deep breath. “So let’s talk other options.”

“There aren’t any,” Willow said flatly, before sitting back down on the bed and putting the textbook over her lap.

“That can’t be true,” Buffy said. “Let's just reach into the ol’ magic toolbox and—“

“There aren’t,” Willow snapped, her knuckles white against the book’s edges. “Not that aren’t dark. Summoning is about control, and control is always dark. Ava was good at finding loopholes using tantric energy; it was kind of her thing.” Willow’s voice softened. “Buffy, if it makes you uncomfortable, you shouldn’t feel bad about not wanting to do it given, well, everything. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I hadn’t heard—but I can’t help you with anything else without risking—”

A loud crash came from down the hall.

“What was that?”

“About that . . .” Willow began, but Buffy was already opening the door and striding toward her bedroom.

It was full of girls holding weapons. Which wasn’t a rare sight for this particular room, but usually that girl was her.

“Check this out,” Kennedy said, pulling a hand ax out of the carved weapons chest Buffy kept at the end of the bed and giving it a little twirl. Of all the Potentials, the only one whose name Buffy consistently remembered was Kennedy, and that was because every time she spoke, Buffy added her name to the list of people she hoped to never talk to again after the apocalypse came. You had to find the silver linings in fiery world endage where you could.

“I never knew swords were so heavy,” Vi said, staring forlornly at the blade across her lap.

“Or that crossbows were so sensitive,” Rona added from the far side of the bed, where she was placing Buffy’s table lamp back on the nightstand and adjusted the shade. “Do you think this lamp looks, I dunno . . . like it wasn’t knocked over by a crossbow?”

“What are you doing?” Buffy said, crossing her arms over her chest and wondering what it was with crossbows and lamps.

The girls’ heads snapped her way. They at least had the grace to look somewhat shamed.

“Giles said that now that the Turok-Han was gone, you were going to start training us and help us ‘familiarize ourselves with the weapons,’” Cleo—no, Chloe—said. Whatever her name was, girl did a decent Giles . . . not that that really endeared her to Buffy at the moment.

“And where is Giles?” Buffy said.

Kennedy gave the hand ax another twirl and then stepped forward to hand Buffy an envelope. “His witch friends called this morning and said they got a bead on more Potentials. He caught an afternoon flight. He said to give you that.”

Buffy stared down at her Watcher’s small, even handwriting, fighting the urge to crumple it up into a little ball. Even before defeating the Turok-Han, Giles had been making noises about starting to institute a training regimen, but Buffy had added it to the vague list of future things that her future self would totally be able to do after she got a break or a future dose of massive drugs. When Buffy had thought of it, she had idly envisioned asking a very-much-healed-and-restored Spike if he might be willing to act as a sort of training vampire. But that wasn’t even a possibility now, not if . . .

“Soooo,” Rona said into the silence. “Are we training or what?”

Buffy threw her hands up. “Sure! Why not?” she said, feeling herself toeing that razor-thin line between keep-it-togetherness and a desire to bash everything into a fine, fine dust, and then suddenly realized what was missing from this terrible tableau. Her eyes flew to the blinds, which were wide open and letting in a swath of sunlight. “Where’s Spike?”

“We waited until he went downstairs to come up here,” Vi said quickly.

“Downstairs?”

“The basement.”

Why couldn’t anyone in this house just stay where she put them?

As calmly and evenly as possible, Buffy said, “There’s a weapons chest in the living room that you guys can look through. But in the future, please ask before you go through my personal things.” _Please ask before you invade my life._

A flurry of whispers erupted behind her as she left and headed down to the first floor. In the kitchen—which was trashed, again—Buffy paused to look at the envelope containing Giles’ letter. Truth be told, she didn’t even want to open it. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine the contents.

_My dear Buffy. Do be careful not to let the apocalypse simmer over while I’m away, and if you feel like having any emotions, please wait until I return with additional random girls so that your feelings can be directed to a place of my choosing. You there, young boy, go and fetch me a turkey._

Whenever Buffy let Mind Giles go on for too long when she was annoyed, he channeled _A Christmas Carol_.

Buffy shoved the letter in the kitchen junk drawer, unopened, just as a voice floated up the basement stairs. Oh no.

Andrew was at the foot of the basement stairs, talking animatedly to a listener in the far corner.

“—And so, because of all the reasons just listed, I don’t hold it against you that you broke through the wall to bite me. Can we hate the victims of the Cybermen in Doctor Who? Can we blame Morpheus for revealing the passwords to the Matrix? Can we blame those brainwashed by the Goa’uld?” Andrew said.

“Imagine you’ll tell me,” Spike’s voice said.

The steps creaked under Buffy’s weight as she started down, causing Andrew to shriek and whirl around.

“Oh look,” Spike drawled. “Slayer’s here. Suppose that’s the end of story hour.” He was sitting on the small camping cot that her mom used to bring upstairs whenever Dawn was scared and wanted to sleep in her room—or the inserted memory of Dawn was afraid to sleep and wanted to sleep in her room. The lines of the carved symbols still stood out red and raw on his chest as he slumped against the wall, and his left eye was still purple and swollen.

“Andrew—”

“Ihaveareasonforbeinghere!” Andrew reasoned quickly.

“Oookayy,” Buffy said, then waited for him to fill the space, but he just continued to fidget. After a long stretch of silence, he turned and fled up the stairs.

Buffy watched him go, then shrugged. “Tie someone up once and it’s like they’re scared of you forever.”

“Truth is he did have a reason to be here,” Spike said, pointing to a T-shirt that had been folded up and set on the bottom step. “At first.”

Buffy scooped up the shirt and brought it over to him, unable to ignore the hiss of pain that he made while tugging it over his head. After he was done, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.

After a few moments of deliberation, Buffy took a seat on the end of the cot. “Okay, he had his reason. So what's yours that you’re not up in my room?”

“Got tired of little girl heads peeking in and whispering.” Spike opened his eyes and turned his bright blue gaze toward her; that, at least, remained unchanged. “Better down here. Darker. And don’t feel right taking your bed. You’re . . “He stopped, changed course. “So. Any word on my new Exorcist act?”

Letting out a breath, Buffy explained what Giles had told her about the spell of transference and the Turok-Han.

“But we’re totally working on finding another solution,” she reassured him. “Giles is going to do some research while he picks up these new girls, and Willow is looking for a reversal spell. And I’m going to be, you know, hitting the streets and talking to people, and . . .”

She trailed off, feeling the weight of her ineffectual lies hanging between them. She braced herself for him to call her on it.

“Right. Well. Suppose that solves one problem,” he said after a few moments, and then tapped his head when she wasn’t understanding. “No use makin’ someone your bitch if the bitch can’t bite.”

Buffy experienced a flare of anger. This wasn’t . . . Spike. Spike was supposed to be the Buffy Lie Detector. Through their entire relationship, whether they were mortal enemies or reluctant allies or freaky sex buddies, Buffy could count on one thing to be constant: whenever Buffy tried to slide a lie under the door and walk away, Spike flung the door open and threw the lie back in her face along with several other pointed and uncomfortable observations about her character, calling, physical attributes, feelings, and general Buffy-ness. Once he got caught wind of something she was trying to keep buried, he wouldn’t freaking shut up about it.

In fact, Souled Spike would rarely challenge her on anything other than how he didn’t deserve to be wherever she’d put him. Souled Spike knew how to be quiet, and even though Buffy could see the thoughts grinding away behind his eyes, he wouldn’t broach them.

And Buffy was sick of it.

“You can’t tell me you believe that,” she snapped.

His resigned expression grew startled. “Huh?”

“Hitting the streets? What am I going to find out on the streets?” She got up and started to pace, and maybe she felt a little bad about the new wariness in his expression as his eyes followed her, but what could he expect if he just sat there, blinking and pulling at his hair, while she spouted complete bullshit?

“Tell me about the ritual you did to restore Drusilla,” Buffy insisted. “You know, back when you first came to Sunnydale.”

He just blinked again. All told, and despite herself, Buffy had often thought that this was a weirdly cute new addition to the pantheon of Spike expressions, but not now, goddammit.

“You know, when you were all yadda yadda gotta heal my dark princess and kidnap Angel and somehow killing the Slayer is part of that. Was she drinking blood when she was sick?”

“I . . .” He cocked his head to the side. “Not much. I’d bring her things but—“

“Okay,” Buffy said, cutting him off because she so did not want him to follow that thought. “Maybe she was dealing with the same lack of vampire essence or whatever it is that you are. I know that you needed that book and cross thingy, and Angel, and an old church. What else?”

“A new moon,” Spike said. “But Buffy—“

“Right, okay, so what happened to the book and the cross?”

“Uh . . . might have left them there?”

Buffy stopped pacing. “You left them there? For anyone to waltz in and take? Geez, didn’t anyone ever teach you to pick up after your dark rituals?”

He gave her a look. “So sorry, but I was a bit unconscious on account of the giant organ you dropped on me. And good luck getting Drusilla to pick up anything. Always said it was because things were jabbering at her, but really, what would a wet towel have to say?”

Before Buffy could unpack that, he was continuing.

“And honestly, I kind of thought your lot would take it. Put it in a vault of evil knickknacks, or whatnot.”

“Hey, I slay! I don’t curate.”

“Convenient, that.”

“Urgh! Fine. We’ll just hope Sunnydale’s finest have left the ancient book and one-and-only mystical monk cross alone for five years. And I can look at the calendar and see when the next new moon is. We can probably use the same church, it’s still abandoned, and—”

“Buffy,” Spike said, this time firmly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the thinking out of the box, pet, but you’re forgetting an important ingredient.”

Buffy waved a hand in his direction. “Willow knows a spell to get Drusilla here.”

Odd silence descended again as he watched her, considering. “She does, does she? Thought Red was taking a sabbatical from the magic.”

Buffy knew that this was the moment where she should explain what spell she was considering on casting, and how this spell was going to bring a lot more than just Drusilla to Sunnydale. She could see the moment floating in the air all around them; all she needed was to sit back down on the cot and grab it with both hands. And yet those words remained stuck in her throat.

For one thing, Spike’s weird grab bag of mystical knowledge meant he might actually know what the spell entailed . . . and that would rip the roof right off this chummy house they were slowly building piece by piece. Rip it up down to the foundations, even, and expose all of the wriggling worms that were left over from what happened last year. She didn’t think she could function if all their misdeeds were paraded out into the open again to hang between them like a big cloud of bad, poisonous smog. And she needed to function.

So all she said was, “It’s not dark. Willow says it’s fine.”

Spike studied her for a long moment, and she could tell that his Buffy Half-Truth Meter was blinking even if he couldn’t put a finger on why, but this time when he let it go, she was glad.

“And the plan for when Drusilla gets here?” Spike said.

“The ritual worked without Angel actually dying, so maybe we can replicate—“

Spike made a pfft noise. “Oh that—the sire doesn’t need to die. I just wanted to kill Angel so told her it was part of it.”

He gave a little shrug and Buffy rolled her eyes. Of course.

“Well, that’s good for us then, right?” she said. “I was thinking we could set up a spell to alert me when Drusilla gets here and then we could, I dunno, go talk to her. See if she’ll help.”

“Right. And she’s just going to help me out of the goodness of her unbeating heart because . . .”

“You were together for like a hundred years!”

“Not this me,” Spike said. “Seem to recall she didn’t much like the soul. Seem to recall she chased it away.”

A note of . . . something had entered his voice. Regret? Bitterness? Nerves at seeing an old flame?

It was enough to make Buffy resume her place on the cot and even scooched a little closer. She was having a hard time understanding how Drusilla wouldn’t want to help, even with the soullessness and all the bad, murky water under the bridge. Buffy wasn’t even sure how she felt about Spike half the time, and yet there was still that part of her panicking when she thought she wouldn’t have the opportunity to not know how she felt about him half the time.

“Well, we’ll cross that rickety bridge when we come to it,” Buffy said, fixing her gaze on his, willing him to say yes.

For a moment, Spike seemed tempted, but then he looked away with a gesture that was ambiguous when it came to whether it his head, his body, or all of him. “It’s not worth it, Buffy.”

Grabbing his hand, she re-trapped his gaze. The words started to get caught in her throat again, but she forced them through; if she couldn’t tell him the whole truth of the situation, at least maybe she could manage this.

“Spike . . . I’ve got a house full of girls that I somehow need to train to fight the ultimate evil, and every day it seems Giles is swooping in bringing more. Everyone in this house is either vulnerable or operating at half power, and they’re all looking to me to come up with some kind of plan, but I don’t have one. I can’t even think of one because—“ Buffy stopped, feeling something clawing its way back of her throat. “I need your help,” she said. “Please. I know it’s not a perfect plan but it’s the only one I have.”

Realizing that the thing in her throat was the incoming of tears, she let go of his hand and stood up, wiping at her eyes and taking a moment to look away so she could gather the fallen fragments of her armor. When the silence behind her became too much, she went over to the laundry machine and started to throw things in. “Do you think I can order the girls to just wear all one color?” she said perkily, hoping it disguised the shakiness. “It would really make sorting everything so—“

“Okay,” Spike said softly behind her.

Buffy whipped her head around. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Have Red get Drusilla here,” he said, then gave a little shrug. “Will at least make things interesting, I suppose.” A small smile quirked his lips. “’Cause, you know, it’s just been so boring.”

The next thing Buffy knew, she was across the room and she was hugging him. Arms-wrapped-around-his-chest hugging him.

She felt them both tense up at the exact same moment. Apart from their numb slog back to the house last night, she’d barely touched him since he’d reappeared back in Sunnydale because the feelings it invoked were such a bizarre mix of kneejerk fear and old hormonal tinglies that she didn’t know how to process without hating herself for being so messed up that there were any old tinglies at all. Or did she hate herself because there was still a kneejerk fear when, technically, if she were going by the Angel equation that had sustained her for years, the man who caused them didn’t even exist at all?

Buffy almost pulled away, but then he put a tentative hand on the back of her head and tenderly stroked her hair, just a little. And it felt good. And, anyway, when had Old Spike and Old Buffy ever really hugged anyway? It wasn’t even in the old equation, so maybe she should just stop worrying about it.

Spike groaned.

“Wha—”

“Sorry. Few ribs still broken.”

“Oh right, sorry,” Buffy said, standing up and smoothing a hand over the same spot his hand just was. “I’m just . . . going to go tell Willow that we’re on. Right?”

After just a beat, he gave a little nod of acknowledgement.

As Buffy went up the stairs, she felt ten times lighter, even though there was a little voice whispering in the back of her mind that she hadn’t broached the question of who else besides Drusilla might be showing up. But she told that little voice to shut up; she was the Slayer, she could deal with whatever the spell threw at her.

It was getting through the spell that Buffy was worried about.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Buffy parked outside the ruined church just as the sun began to rise, painting the sky behind the imposing façade in colors more vibrant than the church’s stained glass windows.

The plan was to go in, see if the du Lac and book thingies were still there, then get to the school and sneak behind her desk while Principal Wood was wrapped up in his morning announcements. As plans went, it ranked low in both complexity and potential for death—so why had her stomach suddenly swarmed with nerves?

Telling herself it was just the Big Gulp of Diet Coke that she had picked up on the way here to make up for another three-hour night of sleep, Buffy grabbed her bag and walked down the overgrown path to push open the heavy, smoke-stained wooden doors. Her entrance unsettled a pair of birds in the rafters of the foyer and something else in the far corner that Buffy preferred not to think about. 

The church was abandoned five years ago, and after the fire, it had become a fall-down-around-your-ears kind of abandoned, with a collapsed wall into the sanctuary further down the corridor and a lingering smell of char that became oppressive the longer she stood there. A soft breeze blew in, ruffling the faded papers still tacked to the surprisingly untouched bulletin board to the right of the entrance. There, amidst the advertisements for SAT prep and long-ago bake sales and Spanish tutors, was a purple flyer advertising a Town Council meeting where citizens could address their concerns about the rising crime rate, decreased property values, and the presence of local “hooligans.”

“Hooligans” was a Snake Mayor word if ever there was one, but the event was hosted by one Deputy Mayor Allan Finch. _Who was Allan Fi—_

She stopped the thought cold as the memory swamped her—the memory of vacant eyes and the squelching sound that Faith's stake made when it stuck deeply into his chest that would take centuries to turn to dust rather than seconds. Even though Buffy hadn’t been the one to kill him, there was a time when that name had felt like an invisible brand across her chest, but it seemed that time had passed. Hell, she was having trouble remembering the names of people trying to help her and dying for it _now._

Suddenly angry, Buffy took out her feelings on the charred remains of the blackened sanctuary doors, blasting them open with a cathartic side kick. Maybe it was the image of the deputy mayor’s bloodless face, or maybe it was the lack of sleep, but it took Buffy a second to process what she was seeing when seven pairs of gold eyes blinked back at her from the haphazard arrangement of blackened pews inside. 

Vampires. Nesting in a church.

There was a moment where the two sides considered one another. Then a lanky vampire in an Invader Zim T-shirt jumped up and took the lead with a familiar shout of “Slayer!” The others scrambled into position, leaping over toppled furniture until there were three flanking each side. 

“So I’m not even an Easter-and-Christmas kind of churchy these days,” Buffy said, her hope that this would be a quick job deflating, “but I’m pretty sure you’re not the kind of congregation they put on the website.”

With a growl, Invader Zim picked up the nearest object and lobbed it at her. She ducked, and the book’s pages flapped over her head. 

“Did you just throw a _Bible_ at me?” Buffy asked.

Invader Zim looked embarrassed for a second. “Yeah . . . well . . .” His yellow eyes narrowed. ”Dude, can we just fight now?”

Buffy threw her bag in the nearest corner and took her stake from its hidden spot at her waist. “Sure. But fast. Kind of on a time table here.”

There was something reassuring these days about fighting a nest of regular old vamps. Not incorporeal Evil. Not eyeless Bringers. Not creepy, skin-slurping Gnarls. Not freakishly strong super vampires. Not even vampires she knew in high school who wanted to sit her down and ask her about her father. Just bumpy, fangy, bite-first, never-ask-questions vampires who exploded as soon as she poked them in the heart—as she did with the first two vampires who rushed her in the aisle, _dust_ and _dust—_ or caught fire as soon as she pushed them into the sun flooding the front of the sanctuary through a large hole by the roof—as she did with the next one, a vamp whose long blond hair caught fire as soon as Buffy kicked her toward the crumbling altar.

“You know,” Buffy said, as she turned back to the remaining four, “as nests go, this one seems kind of flammable. You might want to brush up on your Vamp 101. Hey! What about night classes?”

“I got my certificate in accounting _last year_ ,” Invader Zim growled, finally surging forward himself. He surprised her with a roundhouse kick that sent her crashing into the pew behind her. “And my black belt when I was _seventeen._ ”

Buffy leapt back to her feet. “Mazel tov,” she said. “Still not going to help you win this one. Kind of fighting in a different class these days.”

A flicker of indecision rippled over his heavy brow and he turned to the remaining three vamps behind him. “Go. You can get to the sewers from the community room exit if you run.”

Two of the hangers-back fled, clearly happy to be relieved of doomed fighting duty as they scrambled over the detritus of the collapsed wall, but a brown-haired vamp with a polo shirt and floppy Boy Band bangs hesitated. “But what if they are—”

“Go!” Zim barked. “Better our chances out there right now than—”

Zim exploded into dust before he could finish the sentence, Buffy being reluctant to deal with any surprise black belt moves or, for that matter, accountants.

“Any last requests?” Buffy asked as she approached the remaining fledge, expecting him to either attack her or flee out the back. However, after a fearful look behind him, he veered toward the altar and scrambled to pull his smoking limbs beneath one of the scorched red curtains that framed the sides of the stained glass.

“You know I can see your feet, right?” she asked, tugging on the curtain so that the whole thing detached from the stone wall and came tumbling down, exposing him to the sun’s rays.

 _“Shit,_ oh shit!” Boy Band said as his torso caught fire. He danced around, but it only made the flames worse until he collapsed in a pile of dust.

As group battles went, that was anti-climactic. A part of her hated it when they didn’t fight back; it made her feel like a bully, and she felt like that way too much these days. Buffy sighed, and wiped a hand over her cheek, realizing too late that it was sooty from ash. She was not only going to be late to work, she was going to have to figure out a way to sneak into the bathroom and clean up. Given the state of her outfit, maybe she should skip the counselor gig altogether today and chase after the escaped vamps in the sewer, or even go home and take a nap.

But no—she needed this job. It paid better than flipping burgers, let her keep an eye on the Hellmouth, and there was no smell, unless you counted the vaguely corn-chippy one of unwashed teen boy. You couldn’t just look the gift horse of Jobs You Are Drastically Underqualified for in the mouth.

Buffy looked around at the remains of the burnt-out sanctuary. While the stained glass windows were as lovely as ever, crumbling saints judged her from the walls, and torn pages of the Book of Revelations were scattered over the carpet. _Appropriate vamp reading, I guess_ , she thought as her eye fell on the towering heap of blackened wood across the aisle. That had to be the remains of the organ that she’d caused to fall on Spike so long ago—she’d never tell him this, but that was still a prized track on her mental greatest hits album, _Now That’s What I Call Slaying: Volume I_.

Luckily, the sheet-covered table under the windows hadn’t received much more than smoke damage, and there was still a collection of old-looking objects that would have made Giles’ eyes light up if he’d seen them at Boring Old Stuff Emporium.

Buffy’s heart started to pound as she approached it. This was the moment of truth. Her whole plan of curing Spike hinged on the fact that no one in Sunnydale had recently been in the market for restoration spells or important-looking artifacts. But if vampires had weirdly started using this place as a nest . . .

No, _there_. There, in the middle of the bunched-up fabric, a glint of gold that revealed itself to be a cross with intricate scrollwork and flourishes. The dagger part of it was still unsheathed, revealing the dark brown stain of dried blood at its tip. Angel’s blood. Drusilla’s blood. And behind it, a heavy book that she flipped open to reveal foreign script. Underneath, tight handwriting ran alongside the text, translating this gibberish into English. _Eligor, I name thee. Bringer of war . . ._

Buffy scooped them both up and clutched them to her chest, a warm, giddy emotion washing over her. It took her a few seconds to identify it as relief—the kind of relief that made your knees buckle if you’d just let yourself succumb. It was immediately swamped by a sensation of déjà vu so strong she found herself blinking. Suddenly she was in a torch-lit nave, cradling Angel after spending the full day thinking that she’d never see him again. She hadn’t cared who saw, even though she could feel the judgement rolling off Kendra in waves. She’d loved him, her vampire, and she’d thought that their love was untouchable.

But it hadn’t been. And it never was.

For many years, Buffy had thought that girl in the slouchy flannel shirt was her best self: a self she lost when Angel left, and then Riley left, and then she left the mortal coil. A self she’d never get back to. And yet here, clutching this book, she suddenly felt the closest she’d been to her in years. The problem was she didn’t know what she thought of that girl anymore. Was that how you were supposed to love? Or was that girl just stupid, blindly chasing after something that anyone could see was doomed?

Rattled, Buffy went over to the corner where she’d thrown her bag and stuffed the book and cross inside. There was a lot to do today, and she needed to focus.

When she left, she made sure not to look back.

_____

Whatever relief Buffy had felt at finding the Restoration materials evaporated when she got home that evening and found Willow sitting behind her laptop at the dining room table, her face strained. At first Buffy thought the cause was Andrew, who was sitting next to her friend and babbling about creating a fair and impartial system for choosing what movies were played on the house’s lone DVD player after dinner, but the frown remained fixed even after Buffy stared at Andrew until he went away.

“Has another lamp been sacrificed to the lamp gods?” Buffy asked.

“No,” Willow said. “Well, maybe. There was a crash from upstairs a few minutes ago. But it's one of the ingredients for your spell. It's gonna be hard to find.”

Buffy sighed. She’d known that first part was too easy. “What’s missing?”

“The Lover’s Root,” Willow said. “It’s pretty rare, because of the hallucinogenic properties, but apparently the dimension it comes from had a drought last year and so now it’s more so. None of the witches in Sunnydale have any stashed away, and what’s available on the internet has a price tag with more zeros than I think you can likely do without losing a kidney.”

“So . . . what are the options?” Buffy said, feeling another headache swimming up behind her eyes.

Willow hesitated. “Well, one, I could look for a way to zap some in from the other dimension, but it’s dicey.”

“I don’t want you to do something you’re not comfortable with,” Buffy said. “And besides, we need you to save your strength in case the First decides to show itself again.”

For a second, Willow looked relieved, and Buffy wondered again if she’d been pushing her friend too hard, taking advantage of her need to be helpful and save the day. But then again, she’d been pushing herself too hard under the theory that if you ask yourself to do ten impossible things, maybe one impossible thing will actually happen.

“What’s behind door number two?” she asked.

“We ask Anya. Her supplier connections are still pretty much the best in the biz,” Willow said.

Buffy let out groan. It took very little these days to provoke Anya into a rant about power-mad witches and the inability of Gregg at Allstate to go along with the illusion that “an extremely localized earthquake” had leveled the Magic Box last spring. Following that rant was usually _another_ rant about how no one had warned her that “that claim-denying, toupeed little troll” had the authority to boot her from his offices, which he’d done after she’d told him he should be kissing her keister that the world was still there to insure at all. With graphic hand gestures.

“Fine. Where is she?” Buffy sighed.

“Last I saw, out in the backyard with Xander, glaring at any girls who talk to him while he’s building the training dummy. So . . . . the usual.” 

“Right. Okay, let’s go get this over with.”

As it turned out, Anya did have a supplier who could get them Lover’s Root in the next few days, but Buffy would have to pay extra, both as a penalty tax for trying to kill her over the whole frat boy fiasco and also, of course, for expedited shipping. Since it was still cheaper than the kidney option.

And then she waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

“What gives?” Buffy asked Anya four days later when the expedited shipping turned out to be not all that expedited. She’d waited until it was just the two of them and Willow left picking at the tuna-ish casserole Dawn had made in bulk. When she ran out of corn flakes, Buffy was pretty sure she’d added a dash of Fruity Pebbles.

“I told you—without a store, I’m not my suppliers’ priority any more. What do you need it for anyway?” Anya said, pushing her plate away and crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s really only used for sex spells, and it’s not like there’s much room for conjugal visits with you packing us all in like celibate sardines.”

Buffy threw a nervous look at Willow, who rambled a little bit about needing the ingredient for an offering to Ishtar, Goddess of War _and_ Sex, until Anya waved an impatient hand. Her eyes had wandered back over to Xander, who was basking in the glow of nubile attention as he regaled the baby slayers with some highly embellished story about how he had single-handedly defused a bomb in the high school one time.

“I’ll give him another call, but you’re paying for any _expedited_ expedited delivery fees,” Anya said, then stood up and huffed into the living room to start an impromptu lesson on the value of the girls cultivating a rich and diverse investment portfolio despite their gnat-like lifespans. Because, after all, you never knew when someone might pop you out of the grave and hand you a stack of bills.

“I should probably put a stop to that,” Buffy mused. And she would. In a little bit. 

“You did tell us not to be shy when it came to speaking to our strengths,” Willow said, spearing a piece of casserole and waving it at Buffy. “Dawnie’s certainly using hers.” Willow eyed the piece more closely. “So, that little ploop of green there—what do you think it is?”

“It’s definitely a fourth cousin to the vegetable family,” Buffy said and then sighed. “How many days did you say we had until the next new moon?”

“You’ve still got three weeks,” Willow said.

“Right,” Buffy said. “So if Drusilla is a week or so away, it still works. Especially since Spike’s still doing okay . . . or as okay as a non-healing vampire can be, I guess.”

It was true that despite the lack of blood Spike seemed to be in some sort of weird holding pattern; he still looked like someone who’d been recently sat on by one of the four-hundred-pound Chirago demons he was always claiming lurked around Sunnydale, but at least he wasn’t getting any worse. Given the way this year was trending, Buffy was counting that as one for the win column, along with the fact that they hadn’t heard a whisper of the First since Buffy pulled Spike out of its cave.

But she still hated this feeling of being _stuck—stuck_ in healing Spike, _stuck_ in training the girls, _stuck, stuck, stuck._ Sure, she’d gotten the Buffy Summers “Train Your Way to Slay” program off the ground on paper, what with Xander’s training dummy and Buffy spending the last two nights cobbling together motivational speeches from half-remembered war movies while she guided the girls through your basic attacks and defensive maneuvers, but she couldn’t really tell what they were getting out of it. It was one thing to take down a bag full of straw with fangs and a “Grrrr, Arghh” drawn on it; it was another to face an actual vampire or any of the millions other things that went bump in Sunnydale.

She’d decided to take them out tonight on a patrol to the less active cemeteries, but she wasn’t feeling all that optimistic about it being more than an exercise in group babysitting. And the call Willow had fielded from Giles this afternoon saying his coven had located another potential slayer to train—in Sunnydale no less—hadn’t made her feel any better.

“Do we even need the Lover’s Root?” Buffy blurted. “I mean, how important is it to follow the spell _exactly?_ Or is it like in recipes that _tell_ you to pre-heat the oven, but you’ll totally still end up with food if you don’t?”

Willow placed her fork down with a clink. “It’s important. Do I need to pull out the ‘Willow Learns Magic the Hard Way’ scrapbook?”

“No, I know,” Buffy said.

Truth be told, it wasn’t getting the ingredients right that was at the top of Buffy’s worry list. Two nights ago, she’d lit a candle and tried to relax enough to do a training run of sorts for the _spell_ parts of the spell. Instead, she had just ended up staring at the ceiling and counting up how long it’d been since she’d felt like getting sexy with herself to anything, much less to . . . what it wanted her to do.

Almost a year, she’d realized. A year since she’d sliced off the part of herself that _wanted_ in order to escape the bear-trap of sex and violence, violence and sex. And it had been better since then—there were still no highs, not really, but there also weren’t any terrible lows like the alley or the bathroom, and God, that was worth it.

But the spell needed a memory of “mutually pleasurable sex” between herself and Spike to serve as an anchor, although the details beyond that were ominously vague. And what did “mutually pleasurable” mean, really? Just orgasms, or more? Because if it was more, Buffy was having a hard time coming up with a single event she and Spike had had where one of them didn’t end up angry or wounded. Or both.

No, she was going to have to pop open the terrible can of memory snakes that was her relationship with Spike. Much to her dismay, after everything, there were still snakes in there that made the phantom limb of her hormones tingle. But there were also snakes that made her body seize up in mortification at how horrible and abusive it had gotten between them. Not to mention the worst snake of all, the one she knew had the ability to swallow all the other snakes whole if it even peeked its head out during the proceedings.

At work today she had googled “Can you put snakes back in a can?” And then she had googled “Snakes that eat other snakes.”

Really, her job didn’t give her enough to do.

“I’ve been thinking,” Willow said slowly, and Buffy came out of her thoughts to find her friend was studying her closely. “I know you haven’t done a lot of magic—or none, really, since getting your Cloutier on—and we do know a more practiced caster who might meet the spell’s, uh, more particular requirements.”

When Buffy just looked at her blankly, Willow’s eyes trailed over to the living room, where Anya was now gesticulating wildly as she encouraged the girls to start charging for their slaying services from the beginning, because if you establish a set value with the customer from the first interaction, you’re unlikely to face complaint later. Xander had taken a seat on the couch and was rubbing his temples.

“She might be game if we talk to her,” Willow continued. “I mean, she has less baggage involving Spike. Not to mention, hey! A complete and convenient lack of sexual shame.”

Buffy stiffened. “I’m doing the spell. I need to be the one Drusilla comes to. Spike’s—I’m doing it.”

“Right, but with the precautions we’re putting in place, we could make sure to—”

“I’m doing it,” Buffy said, then changed the subject. “So, you have what you need to locate this new potential Giles told you about?”

Willow’s mouth tightened as an awkward silence settled in. Willow had been asking her a lot of questions lately about who was likely to be showing up with this spell, questions that Buffy had been ignoring. If she played this right, no one but her and Willow would even have to know she’d done the spell at all.

“I have to pick up a few more things, but we should know tonight,” Willow said finally, then hesitated a little before soldiering forward. “And you’ll get what we need to do the locater spell for Drusilla? And for—”

“It’s handled. I’m going back out tonight after I drop the girls back off here,” Buffy said. “Speaking of which. . .” She stood up and focused her attention on the living room. “Whoever wants to go on patrol tonight meet me outside in the back yard in fifteen.”

As the girls scrambled upstairs to get ready, abandoning Anya and Xander to one another’s dubious company, Buffy headed toward the porch. A pair of voices stopped her as she passed the basement.

Spike hadn’t emerged since he’d exiled himself there three days ago. Most times Buffy had gone down there to do laundry or dig through the boxes for equipment that Giles had used in their early training days together, he’d thankfully been sleeping. Although once he’d been on the bemused end of Dawn's rant about how his and Buffy’s super-freak status made them woefully ignorant when it came to proper long-term wound care “for, like, the 99.99999 percent.” Afterwards, Dawn had helped him wrap his torso so his broken ribs were at least rendered as immobile as possible, and Buffy, loitering down there to make sure the First wasn’t going to pull anything with Spike, had found herself suddenly jealous of her sister’s ability to pretend like the last four months of chilly silence hadn’t happened.

Dawn had been going down there more and more frequently. Now, she heard the rising intonation that meant Dawn was getting into whatever she was talking about, followed by the low rumble of . . . was that a chuckle?

 _This is good,_ Buffy told herself, _I can’t be the only one dealing with the Spike in the basement thing_ , and yet at the same time she felt a dark little lick of . . . something. She missed his laugh, she realized, something she hadn’t heard, really, since he’d come back with the soul. She’d heard him have a ten-minute argument with a patch of nothing in the Sunnydale High basement about the best way to make something called a “plum duff,” but not that.

The distinct sound of someone clearing his throat behind her made Buffy turn away from the door. Andrew was wringing his hands by the kitchen island. He’d been growing bolder in talking to her over the last few days; while he still had trouble modulating the speed of his words, they no longer ran together in one big blobby, incoherent mess.

“What is it, Andrew?”

“I think I should go with you tonight,” he said, making a visible effort to stop fidgeting and straighten his shoulders. “You know, to help with morale.”

“Last time I checked, standing to the side while the girls sparred saying ‘Fight, little doggies, fight’ wasn’t exactly great for the morale. It kind of freaked Vi out.”

“On the surface, perhaps, but deep down—”

“No. You can stay here and help Willow and Xander with the spell to find the new potential in Sunnydale.”

Andrew sighed. “You just don’t want me to come along because you think I’m evil.”

“I don’t think you’re evil. I just think when you get close to it you pick up its flavor, like an evil mushroom something. So that’s why you’re staying with Willow and Xander.”

“Yeah, but if we’re being technical, didn’t Willow—” He stopped short when he saw Buffy’s face. “Fine. I just thought you might want a chron—” He stopped again, clearly remembering her feelings the first time he suggested pulling out a video recorder. “Company. I thought, hey! You might want some company. Okay, bye now,” he said, then skedaddled back to the living room.

 _I do,_ Buffy thought, her eyes drawn to the basement door before she could stop herself, but then she shook it off and went to wait in the backyard.


	6. Chapter 6

With seven years of patrolling behind her, Buffy knew that some nights would be more exciting than others. For every night you met Dracula or caught some oozy demon trying to make off with the Golden Scrunchie of Badness or whatever oozy demons were into that week, there were those nights where you walked around in circles for hours only to find that the largest evil afoot was the guy who didn’t clean up after his Doberman. 

However, explaining that to a group of hot-to-slay Potentials was proving difficult.

“Tuesday nights are normally pretty hopping here,” Buffy explained as she led the girls into their third cemetery, and sent up a plea that the two fresh graves in the shade of the big sycamore tree would yield at least one fledgling.

“You said that at the last cemetery,” Kennedy said, hopping up to sit on the base of a nearby monument and swinging her legs. “And instead we ended up playing ‘I’m Going on a Picnic’ for an hour.” 

“Well, now we’re going to a picnic and bringing vampires,” Buffy snapped. She hadn’t even been serious about playing that game, more a quip to lighten the mood, but the girls had run with it. At least until no one could remember what they brought that started with ‘F’.

Kennedy rolled her eyes, the same little slyly judgmental twist on her lips that she’d been giving to Buffy for the last four days. Was it the fact that the girl had grown up with a Watcher that made her so certain she could do everything better? If Buffy had been located when she was just a potential slayer, if she had spent years training, the power dangling in front of her like some sort of mystical Ho-Ho just out of reach, would she have wanted it like Kennedy seemed to? Would being Chosen have felt like a reward rather than a curse tearing through her life like a tornado?

Or would she have still been scared out of her mind, just better trained not to show it?

“Look,” Buffy said, feeling a sudden softening. “I know I’ve been giving you guys a lot of speeches lately, and you are probably sick of it. And I know we haven’t exactly been running the Ritz, what with the sleeping bags and the dubious casseroles and the truly sucky bathroom situation. Slaying is a hard job, and sometimes a really bad job, but under the circumstances, I think you guys are—“

“Freezer pops!” Vi crowed, apropos of nothing, and then, when she realized everyone was looking at her. “I mean, that was what I was bringing on the picnic.”

“They’re going to melt,” Kennedy said.

“At least she didn’t say we were bringing _a brie wheel_ ,” Rona said.

 _Last time I try for a Hallmark moment_ , Buffy thought, her head starting to pound as the girls bickered. The frustration and restlessness began to creep back in. How was she supposed to resurrect this outing when vampires were steadfastly refusing to resurrect themselves? She needed to show these girls _something_ if she was going to have any chance of keeping them focused. She flirted with the idea of taking them to the Alibi Room—where they would probably at least see some demons—but Tuesday was its busiest night, and without another pair of eyes and muscle making sure no patrons were overcome with the munchies as they downed their slime cocktails, it felt risky.

“Come on. We’re going to go check out a vampire lair,” Buffy said decisively, happy when she saw that even Kennedy’s eyes went a little wide at that suggestion.

It was a ten-minute walk to the old Crawford mansion. Buffy had planned to go there later anyway, fairly certain that she could find some old belonging of Drusilla’s there that could be used for a locator spell. Angel hadn’t really gotten rid of anything when he’d come back from hell, just thrown it all in a room, shut the door, and never looked at it again. In retrospect, she probably should have taken note. 

Leaves crunched under their feet as they all entered the old, moonlit courtyard. Buffy hadn’t been here in years, and it was vinier than she remembered, not to mention that someone at the Sunnydale water company had finally caught wise and turned off the fountain. Without the happy burble, and with the smell of murk overpowering the smell of jasmine, it was far spookier than it used to be.

Or maybe it had always been spooky, and Buffy just hadn’t been paying attention because of a half-naked vampire doing Tai chi.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Buffy chirped. “Let’s go.”

“Do vampires still . . . live here?” Vi said.

“Dunno,” Buffy said. “Let’s find out!”

Truthfully, though she’d kept it as a stop on her patrol for a few months once she got back from L.A., she’d never once found a vampire here, the rumors of its last resident ending up in a hell dimension clearly acting as a significant enough “Buyer Beware.” Apart from several years’ worth of new dust, not much had changed. It was still decorated like Angel had picked a few things up at Dracula’s yard sale.

“Are those _chains_?” Rona asked as they stepped into the vaulted living area with the empty fireplace.

“Yup!” Buffy debated over whether she should tell them that once they’d been used to help trick a rogue slayer named Faith, but decided that explaining how she and Angel had come to work together on that one would just make things complicated. “And over there,” she pointed, “was where a vamp tried to suck the whole world into hell. Oh! And once, right in front of the fireplace, this fake Watcher lady tried to kill me with a wicked-looking glove thing. Good times!”

The Potentials’ eyes had gotten large, and Buffy noted with satisfaction that even Kennedy was looking impressed, albeit begrudgingly. When Buffy caught her eyes, she frowned and made a point to split off from the knot of girls clustering in the center of the room, taking great and very pointed interest in the dusty weapon displays that still lined the walls.

“So the thing is, slaying isn’t always just about the vamps,” Buffy said. “You have to be on your toes for anything and everything that can pop its head out of the Hellmouth.”

Buffy continued to talk about past non-vamp slays, her voice echoing more loudly as she gained confidence. She told them about heart-stealing Gentlemen and government Frankenmonsters with uranium hearts. She told them about leechlike bug creatures from space and possessed puppets. She talked long enough that she actually started to feel good about their chances with the First. Sure, it was the ultimate incorporeal evil, but there was a time when they thought they’d never defeat Glory, and Buffy had ended up beating the crap out of her with a giant troll hammer.

She and the Scoobies really did win a lot despite some pretty stacked odds.

High on past successes, Buffy didn’t realize that Kennedy had wandered back to the group until she whirled around to add an anecdote about telepathic demons and why mind reading was _so_ not all it was cracked up to be if you wanted to avoid TMI about your mother’s sex life. 

The petite potential was no longer looking impressed. Instead she was smirking and holding up a spiral notebook that had seen far better days. It was hard to determine its color in the moonlight, but it kind of looked like—

“Buffy plus Angel, 4 Ever,” Kennedy read in delighted sing-song then flipped it around so Buffy could see the bubbly text herself.

Buffy froze. “Where did you find that?” she said quietly.

Kennedy jerked her head toward the fireplace. “It was just sitting there,” she said. “Guess someone meant to burn it. Was Angel the vampire who lived here?” 

The other potentials’ eyes slid back and forth between Buffy and Kennedy a few times before settling on Buffy, who, three years and one death out of college, suddenly felt like she’d been called to the front of the class to present a paper she hadn’t written.

“He had a soul,” she heard herself croak, and then cursed herself for choosing now of all moments not to channel the cool military dispassion that had been getting her through so many uncomfortable conversations lately. She would have killed to redo this with a “That’s not relevant to our discussion right now” a la Maggie Walsh.

“So . . . do all slayers hang out in vampire lairs to do their homework, or is it just you?” Kennedy said.

“He was an ally,” Buffy said, ice coming back into her tone. “An important ally, who helped save everyone from a giant snake demon who wanted to eat the world.”

“Riiiight,” Kennedy said, her eyes glittering with challenge.

Buffy decided the best thing to do was cut this conversation’s head off right now—honestly, she should have done that from the start. These girls had no idea what she’d been through; these girls had no right to judge.

“Anyway,” Buffy said, feigning disinterest, “Getting back to what I was talking about before . . .”

Kennedy sucked in a sharp breath at being ignored.

“You know, it’s funny,” Kennedy said, turning to face the other girls. “One day, when I was fourteen, I woke up and went to train with my Watcher, all excited because she was finally going to teach me to use throwing stars. But when I got our gym, she sat me down and said she’d had a memo from the Watcher’s Council that all potential slayers were now required to go through mandatory briefing on ‘the seductive vampire,’” Kennedy snorted. “And then she spent all day showing me black-and-white photos of old-fashioned guys, one of which I’m _sure_ was named Angel. I told my watcher she didn’t have to worry about me—I mean, not just because I didn’t like guys, but because what sort of slayer would ever want to be with a vamp? But you . . .”

Kennedy’s gaze snapped back to Buffy, who had crossed her arms over her chest tightly and leveling the potential with her best Are You Sure You Want to Continue This gaze. For a second, Kennedy’s expression wavered. But then it hardened again, became resolute.

“You owe me a lesson in throwing stars,” Kennedy said. 

Seconds ticked by, and Buffy just stood there, at a complete loss for what to say. No quips, no rebukes, just . . . speechless. The other girls were staring at her, their eyes lobbing questions like grenades.

“Stay here,” she finally managed to bite out. “I have something to do and then we’re heading back to the house.”

She turned on her heels so sharply that her long jacket whipped around her. As she headed toward the bedrooms at the back of the mansion, punching at the tattered remains of the blue velvet curtain that blocked the hallway. Anger clouded her vision as she felt her way through the dim corridor on her way to the door end of the hallway, the one that Angel had always kept locked and closed. When she finally reached it, she kicked viciously at the lock until the wood splintered and it swung open.

Based on how Angel had always treated it, Buffy half-expected to find bodies hanging from the ceiling on meat hooks, but there was only the shadow of a four-poster bed. A silhouette of a fringed standing lamp stood to one side. She pulled the cord and light illuminated the space. Apparently, the electric company was still staffed by morons.

Suddenly Buffy needed to sit down. Kicking aside what looked like the remains of a mangled wheelchair, Buffy sat on the end of the bed and put her head between her knees, feeling for all the world that someone had taken a scalpel and sliced her open from neck to navel.

 _He was going to burn it,_ something inside her said wistfully before she told that part of herself to shut up. She’d taken these girls out tonight hoping the excursion would make them feel stronger and safer. Instead, the only lesson that had been delivered was that no matter how many times you save the world, all that really mattered to the people in charge was the body temperature of who you screwed before you did it.

 _A lesson._ The Council had turned her love of Angel into a mandatory public service announcement.

 _It’s never going to be enough_.

She could hear the whisper of voices echoing down the hallway, although thankfully she could no longer make out individual words. She raised her head, but then jumped a little to find herself staring into the beady glass eyes of a simpering porcelain tribunal.

Dolls. Lots of them. All lined up in a row.

She wouldn’t have to look all that hard for an object of Drusilla’s.

Buffy stood up and reached out to grab the least creepy one—a curly-haired, green-eyed blonde in a blue dress and jaunty straw hat—but then her hand stilled.

What was she doing? Maybe Giles was right, and this shouldn’t be her priority. Spike wasn’t getting any worse, and she was going to have enough trouble now regaining the girls’ respect without running around trying to heal another sick vampire. Another sick, souled vampire _lover_. Now that Kennedy had spilled the undead beans, it wouldn’t take long for them to make that jump. Panic began to crawl up the back of her throat.

Someone _tsked_ at her from a dark corner.

“Gotta say, Buff, kind of an embarrassing low point for you out there.”

She dropped her hand. Angel was standing in the corner. No, Angelus—Angel never rolled his eyes around like a cow in an effort to shoot coy looks at her through his lashes. But Angel was in L.A. Which could only mean . . .

“Girl has a point, though,” the First said as it wore her ex-boyfriend’s face. “One’s a mistake. Two, though . . . two’s kind of a habit.”

“Thought you’d be off licking your wounds somewhere since I popped the head off your big dumb super vampire,” Buffy said calmly, even as her stomach sank to realize the stalemate was over. “Gotta say, if that was your big plan? Kind of a let-down.”

The smirk faded from Angelus’ face as something cold and reptilian slid in to take its place. Buffy had once thought she’d never seen anything as purely evil as the absence of feeling lurking in her soulless lover’s eyes.

She’d been wrong.

“How’s your boyfriend?” the First said conversationally.

“Not in your cave anymore,” she said, “Are we done here? I’ve got real evil to deal with. Like taxes with fourteen unofficial dependents.”

She turned to go, only to find that the thing wearing Angelus’ face was now blocking the door as it adjusted the cuff of its wine-red dress shirt. For a second Buffy stared at the vee of skin exposed at its collar, wondering how this thing got down details so precisely that it even knew how many buttons to undo. One for Angel. Three for Angelus.

“I admit,” the First said smoothly, “I thought my first vampire would keep you busier for longer, but you win some, you lose some. It still ends with everyone you love dying screaming. Some sooner than later.”

“Get out of my way,” Buffy said between grit teeth. When the thing didn’t move, Buffy stepped around it and headed for the door; she knew she should walk through it as a show of power, but the idea gave her shivers.

It called after her. “Why do you think I’m not messing around with his mind anymore? Out of the goodness of my widdle bitty heart?” it said with a pout. “No, because when I mess with his head, it turns that glorious little piece of sparking metal right off. And that’s not in my best interests right now.”

Buffy stopped. It took her a few seconds to school her expression into impassivity, then she turned around.

“You see,” the First continued. “I’ve learned you can teach an old incorporeal evil new tricks. I used to think, hey, what's a better way to reap chaos than turn her pet vampires against her? But, ah, that was me, being too short-sighted. It didn’t work that Christmas with yours truly, and it won’t work now.”

The thing stepped forward, and she retreated an inch despite herself. 

“Hey, I’m dying to know—how many times do you think his brain can fry before it doesn’t work anymore?” it said, running a considering finger over its lips. “Three times? Four? You have a lot of little human girls in that house.”

Her heart began to pound, but she’d be damned if she’d let it see it was getting to her. It stepped forward again, but this time she held her ground.

“Rest assured, I’m just getting started, Buff,” it said. “I’ll be sending you a present soon. And this time, it won’t be dead fish and roses.”

And then it was gone.

After making sure that the room was empty, Buffy darted over to the regiment of dolls and grabbed the blonde one so forcefully it made the others topple off the dresser. She had to get back and tell Anya to figure out what was taking so long with the Lover’s Root. Dawn was down there with Spike. What if he accidentally bumped her or what if she—

A chorus of high-pitched screams pierced the silence, followed by the rumble of a growl.

_The girls._

Buffy ran to through the door and down the hallway, wrestling with the curtain at the end. She pushed it out of the way just in time to see an exploding burst of dust settling over one of the long couches and Kennedy standing on top of a coffee table, triumphant, wielding a long axe that she’d pulled from one of the standing dust-covered displays.

“I killed it!” she said, her voice sounding more like she’d won a carnival prize than staked her first vampire. “I killed it! One of those super vamps.”

“No,” Buffy said, still feeling a bit dazed. “There’s no way. It took everything I had to kill one of those things. You saw.”

Kennedy’s face hardened and she looked to the other girls, who were still huddled off to the side, grasping one another’s sleeves as though they were safety blankets. Chloe had her face buried in Rona’s shoulder.

“Tell her,” Kennedy said, hopping down. “It was one of those super vamps.”

Vi threw Buffy a nervous look. “I-I mean, maybe? It was dark, and I was kind of having an anxiety attack anyway because I hate it when people fight. You know, my parents got divorced when I was little—”

Kennedy cut her off with a sound of disgust. “Jesus, you all saw it! It was!”

“Look,” Buffy said, putting out a hand to try to calm things down. “You clearly killed a vamp, which is amazing on its own. When we get back I want you to tell me—”

Buffy’s flip phone trilled, signaling a call from Xander. 

“Hold on,” she said and hit the answer button. “Hey, Xan. We’re on our way back—”

There was the sound of shattering glass and a scream that sounded decidedly like Anya’s.

Xander’s voice came on, tight and panicked. “Buffy, they’re her—”

And then the line went dead.


	7. Chapter 7

Buffy set off running for Revello Drive, blood thrumming a swooshing refrain of _stupid, stupid, stupid_ in her ears. It wasn’t until she was turning the corner to her street that she thought to check that the girls behind her were keeping up. They were, thank God—moving swiftly behind her like a vee of panic-stricken geese. In fact, when she stopped so abruptly at the base of the walkway leading up to her house, it was only the arms she flung out on both sides that stopped them all from toppling forward like toy soldiers.

“Shit,” Rona said, her voice tight with tension. “Warn a chick.”

Buffy shushed her sharply, eyes fixed on her home’s front door, which was not off its hinges. The house had been ablaze with light when they left—so much so that an increasing electric bill had been running like a tape ticker in her head—but now there was only the long shadows created by the street light behind them.

“We’re going in slowly,” Buffy said. “And stay together.”

They walked up the stairs to the front porch, glass crunching beneath their feet. The windows were out too. _The First said he was sending a present. Bringers have attacked again, and taken Spike. Or Dawn. Or Willow. Or—_

“Ew, what _is_ that _?_ ” one of the baby slayers said, and before Buffy could snap at her about maintaining a thing called stealth, the smell hit her. A wave of something dark and oily and . . . _putrid_.

A few of the potentials broke off to make retching noises in the bushes, and although a part of Buffy wanted to join them, she channeled years of sewer experience and pressed forward into the dark foyer. She pulled the stake from her waistband.

“Dawn?” she said softly. “Willow?”

She tried the light switch next to the door. Nothing.

Suddenly a dark shape moved in the living room, and her hand clenched reflexively around her weapon. But the shape didn’t seem to be coming toward her. Instead it was occupied in the corner, crouched over something beyond her mother’s long wispy curtains and making a tinny, feeble scraping.

Light flared in the corner.

If this was a demon, it had just changed a light bulb.

“Xander,” she breathed as he stood up and faced her, and there he was, sturdy and beflanneled and smiling—a bit ruefully, because that’s the only way he smiled lately—but smiling. “What happened? Is everyone okay?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, running a hand through his dark hair, Buffy took a worried step forward only to find something squelch beneath her boot. She was standing in a patch of black, tarlike ooze, one whiff of which told her was the source of the terrible odor.

“What is this?” she said. 

“It’s the death knell for that rug, I can tell you that,” said an annoyed voice. “Although I said that about the last demon and yet there we all went, for weeks, pretending that big stain wasn’t there.”

Buffy turned to find Anya cutting her way through the potentials clustered in the doorway. Hairline cuts marred her temple and cheeks, but she seemed otherwise intact. 

“Yes, but what _is_ it?” Buffy insisted.

“You see that sometimes when viscera is melted down at high temperatures,” Anya said. “There’s another one like that in the dining room and two more in the kitchen. Oh, and we found the new potential. Or more accurately, she came to us. That’s what those guys were after, we think.”

“Okay, so—“

“So we should absolutely keep inviting more of these girls here, yes, good plan!” Anya said, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice as she swiped her hair away from her bleeding forehead. “I was just saying there weren’t enough eyeless people coming at us with long, pointy objects these days! Wasn’t I just saying that, Xander?”

Xander sighed. “Anya, why don’t you go help Dawn in the kitchen? Assure our new slayerette this isn’t a daily occurrence, only a biweekly kind of thing.”

Anya slumped down on the sofa, crossing her arms and adopting a recalcitrant slouch. “No,” she muttered. “It smells even worse in there.”

The remainder of the potentials were starting to trickle in from outside, some holding their noses, others trying to turn on lights and then keeping at it long after the first attempt failed.

With another big sigh and one under-his-breath comment about how many slayers it takes to screw in a light bulb, Xander started to walk past Buffy, but she grabbed his arm. “So it was Bringers?”

He nodded.

“But everyone’s okay?” When Anya snorted, Buffy corrected herself. “I mean, minor injuries, but okay.”

There it was again, that hesitation. After a few moments of deliberation, Xander pulled her into the shadows clustered at the back of the living room.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but our attackers are now giant piles of slime,” he said. “And as much as I’d like to take credit …”

“Willow,” Buffy said.

“At her black-eyed best,” Xander said. “But honestly, I don’t know that we’d be alive if she hadn’t gone all scary. As soon as the new slayer showed up at the door, looking for you, ten of them attacked. Spike managed to kill two of them in the kitchen, and Dawn brained one with a frying pan, but it was going badly until …”

“Willow attacked.” Buffy looked at the desk lamp. “And the lights?”

“Blew out when Willow melted everybody. Along with the rest of the windows.”

The relief that Buffy had felt upon walking in the door went up in a puff of smoke—or, she guessed it would be more accurate to say it melted into a puddle of slime.

“Where is she now?” Buffy said tightly.

Xander’s eyes flickered to the ceiling. “Locked herself in her room. And I’m not talking just real locks, I’m talking magical locks. I tried to talk to her through the door, but hello wall of big scary silence.”

When his gaze returned to hers, he was looking at her expectantly.

She sucked in a breath, then exhaled. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Obviously, no one is bunking with Willow tonight. Get everyone who was in there set up in my room,” she said, squashing the tiny voice that squawked at the notion of her final sanctuary in the house being breached. Her eyes trailed to gaping holes where the front windows should be. “Board those up, and then—“

“I’ll call the crew tomorrow,” Xander said. “Have a favor I haven’t called in yet, and they can help get the big rugs out too, which should help with the smell. But after that . . .”

“I know,” she said. After that, who was to say this wasn’t going to keep happening. And now with Willow …

“What’s with the creepy doll?” Xander asked, and it was only then that Buffy realized she was still clutching the blond prize she’d taken from Angel’s old mansion by the neck, almost like it was a very ineffectual stake. She was lucky she hadn’t broken it in the stress of the moment.

“Oh.” She paced it atop the bills piling up on her mother’s desk. “It’s nothing. I should go see what’s happening upstairs.”

She left before Xander could ask more questions, cutting through the mob of girls clustered in the foyer and side-stepping another black shadow on the rug.

As reported, the door to what was now Willow’s room was closed and locked, but it was more than that. Placing a palm flat against the wood, Buffy felt a dark and buzzing energy—one that felt all too familiar.

“Will?” she said softly.

Silence.

Maybe telling Xander to resettle the girls for the night hadn’t been the right call. But their group was so large, and getting larger every day. The Council was gone, Angel’s team seemed to have their own issues going on, and it wasn’t like she had the money to fund a mass exodus.

She debated breaking the physical lock on the door, forcing a confrontation, but then what next? As much as she and Willow had mutually agreed to forgive and forget the events of the spring, the truth was that black-eyed Willow hated her, wanted her destroyed. And what could Buffy ever say to change her mind?

Buffy went back downstairs. 

____________

Dawn was in the kitchen talking to Andrew, rattled but okay. She ran up to give Buffy a hug, then stepped back to introduce a gangly girl hovering by the island that Buffy actually knew quite well. Amanda, Sunnydale High School Student and recent recipient of a babbled monologue about relating to others via violence and insults, a message that Buffy had deeply regretted the second the girl had muttered a confused thanks and slunk out of her chair. Although now that it seemed the girl was a potential slayer, maybe it _was_ applicable. Maybe she wasn’t the worst guidance counselor in the world after all, just a haphazardly psychic one.

“Hi, Miss Summers,” Amanda said shyly, with an awkward little wave. “Dawn told me everything that’s happening.”

 _No. Run. Run now_ , Buffy wanted to say, but there was a war coming, and she heard Giles’s voice in her ear: she needed every body she could get.

Buffy gave what she hoped was a warm smile. “Welcome to the team.”

Amanda gave a nervous one in return. “I have to go home now, but I guess . . . I guess . . . I should I come back tomorrow after model UN?”

Xander entered then, carrying a board that he used to block up the window over the sink. At this point, they should probably give that board a name.

“Actually,” Buffy said. “Could you tell your parents that you’re spending the night here with Dawn?” When Amanda’s face scrunched in confusion, she added, “I don’t know how many eyeless guys with knives this thing has at its bidding. Until we know more . . .”

“Oh.” Amanda frowned, seemed to be considering the new reality. “Oh. Okay.”

Having finished with the window, Xander came up behind her. “Come on,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “It’s time for another exciting game of choose your bedding. I think there’s a She-Ra one still up for grabs. And maybe even a pillow.”

Then it was just Dawn and Andrew, who gave a long-suffering sigh when Dawn tossed a sponge at him and told him to get back to work.

“It’s not doing anything,” he whined, even though he ducked down dutifully.

“I told you—use the scratchy side.”

“Yeah, but that’s for high grease, not melted eyeless guy.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe they just didn’t put it in the commercial. ‘Great for Demon Stains!’ feels kind of niche for the broad market.”

Buffy walked around the island to find the two of them on opposite sides of a large, oily black patch. Either she was getting used to the smell, or—a wave of stench hit her. She was getting used to the smell. Maybe they shouldn’t board up the windows tonight.

Dawn pushed her hair over one shoulder as she looked up. “Spike killed this one but he still melted.” She nodded to the basement door, under which another black stain peeped out. “That one too.”

Andrew stopped his scrubbing to stare dreamily at a spot in the distance. “It was really cool. Even without the coat.”

“Is he . . .” Buffy’s gaze went to the basement steps.

Dawn jerked her chin toward the back door. “Porch.”

Buffy stepped outside, leaving the giddy, post-battle chatter behind her as she closed the door.

The air was cool tonight, the crickets providing a hum of background noise. Spike was sitting on the step, slumped sideways against the left porch railing, his hair a mess of post-fight curls. One hand was pressed against a spot low on his waist. The other held a dangling cigarette. Unlit.

“Spike?”

He roused, straightening when he saw that it was her. His left eye was still puffy and swollen, but it looked like the area around it had changed color. Unfortunately, not in a good way—whereas before it had been a purple, it was now a washed-out mauve that Buffy didn't think she'd ever seen before in the rainbow of healing bruises. 

Wincing, he started to dig in his pocket for his lighter.

“Should you really be doing that?” Buffy asked. “I mean, in your, uh, current condition.” 

He made a show of lighting his cigarette, then took a long drag before tapping the ash in a potted plant that had sacrificed its good looks to her and Spike’s porch conversations a long, long time ago.

“Somehow methinks the baby will be fine,” he said dryly.

“Yeah, but we don’t know if—”

“Lungs are still dead, Slayer. And I don’t feel any worse, or any better, than I did yesterday. Or the day before that. Or the day before that.”

He took another drag, this time keeping his eyes on her as though daring her to say something.

Spike was in a bad mood.

Obviously, this was not an uncommon occurrence. Last year, during the Bad Buffy Time, she had seen his bad moods a lot—usually because of her, and even intentionally provoked by her because she couldn’t stand how stupid happy he looked when she walked through the door to yell at him, or again after they’d done their song and dance and fallen into bed. To be fair, all guys derped out after sex, but most couples didn’t make a point of tearing each other to pieces—verbally and non-verbally—as foreplay. With Spike, it was like everything that came before was suddenly wiped clean, reset, and she was jealous, because God, she wished she could just ignore how truly screwed up it all was and bask for a moment too. That she could ignore the bruises and sit in the sharp glow of orgasm, of buzzy nothingness, without the host of recriminations that rushed right back in to whisper, _He’s a monster. What’s your excuse?_ as soon as they were no longer touching.

So, she had a whole arsenal of breezy deflections and haughty hair-flips that she wielded like a knife as she put on bras and pants and shirts. Things to make it seem like this thing they did was nothing; things to make it seem that, as ugly and raw as this was, it wasn’t the only thing keeping her from flinging herself off the nearest high spot. She’d get a cold thrill when his sleepy expression morphed into a scowl, and he didn’t know it, but if the small patch of stomach between his hipbones was exposed, the place that made him gasp when she even grazed it with her nails or teeth or lips, he’d find a way to cover it, which made her feel like she’d won something, the prize of making him feel miserable and vulnerable too.

And then she’d have to leave before the whole cycle of fight-screw-fight-screw started all over again. 

So no, it wasn’t weird to see Spike in a bad mood, although she racked her brain trying to remember when the last one had been. She’d seen the chest-scratching insanity, and she’d seen flashes of annoyance, the old biting drawl, but apart from an intense bout of resigned sulking done when she strong-armed him into moving in with Xander, it had been a while since she’d felt this particular sort of tension humming from him. Just the after effects of a fight, or …

Slowly, she took a seat next to him on the step. As she did, he turned to peer out into the yard, blowing a puff of smoke out into the night. Buffy had to admit it was a better smell than was inside the house. 

“Heard it was a fun night,” she said lightly.

“Could say that,” he said. “Could also say it was two shakes from going tits up if Red hadn’t decided to pull out the nuclear option.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said softly, staring at a spot between her boots.

“That going to be a problem?” Spike said after a moment.

Buffy hesitated, not knowing how much she should sound the alarm given that there really weren’t many options right now besides _wait and see._ Spike hadn’t been around for veiny Willow, off getting his soul after . . . well, after. Perhaps he didn’t know just how badly it could go.

She was still debating how to answer when she noticed he’d pressed his hand back against his waist. His jaw was tight.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Well, ribs, ad infinitum. But now Bringer knife. Side,” he bit out. “Hesitated a second too long, worried about the chip since I didn’t risk it the first time they nabbed me. Lucky the buggers aren’t human.”

Buffy thought about what fake Angelus had said, a thrum of fear running through her. “Spike, you can’t take chances like that. The First, it came to me tonight, told me it’s been leaving you alone because messing with your head deactivates the chip. It knows you can’t heal right now.”

She expected him to frown, grow solemn as he took in the implications of what she was saying. But he just gave a dark laugh and stubbed the cigarette out on the step. “Figured as much.”

She didn’t like the flatness of his tone. Or the way he wouldn’t look at her.

“Let me see,” she said, reaching for his side.

He batted her hands away. “’s fine.”

“Let me _see_ ,” she said, scooting closer.

For a second he looked like he was going to fight her, but then the resistance went out of him, like a candle had been snuffed, which was even more chill-making than the unhealing wounds. “Have your way then," he said. 

Ignoring the tone, she gingerly lifted his black shirt, and then she sucked in a sharp breath.

The Bringer’s knife had cut him—a clean slice, about three centimeters deep—but that’s not what caused her surprise. It wasn’t bleeding. In fact, she didn’t see any evidence it had bled at all. The bandages around his ribs were still pristine, the skin unstained.

She traced the wound around its edges, feather-light touches to avoid causing pain. One edge of the cut was deeper than the others, and she could see a bit of the bisected flesh, which was not the healthy pink you might expect. And his skin felt … cooler than she remembered, more than could be chalked up to the chill in the air.

She had thought Spike wasn’t getting worse, but that was only because she hadn’t gotten up close. Her heart started to pound.

“Finished?” he said dully, staring pointedly down. 

Belatedly, she realized that she’d splayed her other palm across his lower abdomen as she’d leaned in to get a better look. It twitched. Feeling flustered, she took a guilty scoot back and tried to figure out the best way to phrase this next statement delicately.

“Spike, that looks . . . weird.”

Well, she tried.

He shot her a dark look. “Understatement of the bloody century.”

“No, I mean—does it hurt?” she asked.

He grunted, which she took to mean _yes._

Before she could ask all the questions flooding through her mind, he tossed his cigarette into the bushes, grabbed the porch railing and hauled himself to his feet, emitting several curses when it took a few seconds to find his balance. Then he leaned over and grabbed something that had been hidden in the shadow of the bushes.

His coat. Not _his_ coat, the way she thought of it, but that jean jacket she’d noticed him wearing now that they were working with Version 2.0. Secretly, it was not an update she was sure she liked, but it also could be because it’s what he was wearing when she trailed him all over downtown playing that game of _Are You Still a Mass Murderer?_

The thought distracted her enough that it took her a while to realize Spike had winced his way into it and was heading toward the back gate.

“Where are you going?” she blurted, on alert now.

“Out.”

“Gee, thanks for that illuminating explanation.”

He swung around at that, mouth open as if to say something, only to suck in a sharp breath and touch his side. Various emotions chased across Spike’s bruised face then, although most were in the anger family. Finally, he closed his eye and released a long huff. 

“Look,” he said quietly. “You’ve been busy with this lot, I get it. And I have no right to expect anything from you. The fact you haven’t shoved a stake in me at any point these past few months is miracle enough to earn you sainthood.” He met her gaze. “Shocked you still don’t, to be honest.” 

Buffy opened her mouth to counter, but he cut her off.

“But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here while pieces start to fall off me like a bloody Potato Head. So if it’s all the same, I’m just gonna have myself a looksee at that old church where Dru got fixed. See if the magical vampire First Aid kit is still there.”

“Spike—“

He waved her off, turning around and heading toward the gate in the corner of the yard. “It’s fine, Slayer,” he called back. “If there’s one bloody upside to tonight, it’s proof that those eyeless gits don’t want me anymore. So there’s fuck all out there to stop me.”

She scrambled after him and cut in front of his path. “Spike, I—“

He looked at her impatiently and tried to cut around her. “Don’t expect you to help. In fact, go to bed. Know it’s your footsteps pattering about at four a.m. every night.”

“ _Spike_ , you idiot,” she said, putting a hand on his chest to stop him. “I got it three days ago!”

He stopped at that, unwounded eye widening.

“I got the book. I got the cross thingy. I even went back yesterday and took the cloth on the table, because who knows if it’s some sort of special cloth, and—“ She stopped. “You really think I just _forgot_ the whole plan to heal you _?”_

He clicked his teeth shut. Like with an actual, audible click. 

He had, in fact, thought she had forgotten the whole plan to heal him.

Hurt flooded in then, followed by her own rush of anger. When had she ever not followed through on a plan to help someone she cared about? Hadn’t she just hauled him out of the First’s lair five days ago? Hell, she’d staged an entire _thunderdome_ to make it so she could. Not to mention that she’d spent these past few days running all over Sunnydale in preparation for a spell she was _not_ comfortable with, a spell what was putting her in debt to Anya of all people, in the hopes it would bring Spike’s crazy vampire ex back to town— _multiple_ crazy vampire exes. There wouldn’t be enough tea in the world to keep Giles calm when he inevitably came back and figured out she’d gone against his advice. Not that she cared overly much about what Giles thought right now given his choice to go all guest star in her life, but still. If _Xander_ found out how much effort she was putting into this, he would give her that _look,_ and they would fight, and he and his comforting flannel and rueful smiles would leave and no one would fix the windows or screw in lightbulbs or find the ever-multiplying girls sleeping bags or stop Buffy from actually killing Anya, and, and, and—

But as everything piled up, she realized that of course he didn’t know any of that. Because she hadn’t told him any of that. In the past few days, the only thing she had said to Spike directly was to send Dawn up to let her know when the washer buzzed.

Spike coughed softly, then finally found his voice. “Didn’t think you forgot. Just know you have a lot on your plate, and didn’t figure I ranked—“

This time she cut him off, her chest feeling tight.

“Stop. Just go sit on the porch for a second and I’ll be back,” she said. When he made no move to do so, she sighed. “I’ll fill you in. I should have before. But we should stitch your side first. Even if it’s not healing, at least your liver won’t fall out.”

“Liver’s on the other side, pet.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, whatever organ would fall out. We’ve got enough stains on the carpet as it is.”

He still wasn’t moving.

“Please, Spike.” 

At that, he snapped out of whatever daze he’d been in. “Right. Yeah.”

With a sigh of relief, she headed toward the house, where she was pleased to find the kitchen empty and the tiles where once there had been melted eyeless guy sparkling clean. Dawn and Andrew had even gotten between the crevasses. Three cheers for scrubbing bubbles.

The rest of the house’s flooring wasn’t so lucky—she didn’t even know what she was going to do about the guy who had melted _across_ the stairs and all up and down the wallpaper, and she could hear Xander and Anya’s voices floating in from outside as they prepared the living room rug for its journey across the Rainbow Bridge. Paisley bridge? Well, whatever bridge home furnishings crossed. But at least the windows were covered, the door was somewhat hanging straight again, and the downstairs was quiet, the creaking overhead indicating that the girls were settling in for the night.

Deciding she didn’t want to brave the line for the upstairs bathroom, Buffy opened the kitchen’s junk drawer and searched for the mini bandaging kit she kept there, pushing aside Giles’s unopened letter purposefully as she did. At the last minute, she also decided to go grab the doll of Dru’s she’d nabbed tonight from Angel’s old mansion, feeling a strange need to show her work to make up for the lack of verbal updates.

The living room was dim, the only light coming from the small desk lamp her mother used to use when doing the gallery accounting because she said it kept her mellow. Buffy had tried the Joyce Summers method to no avail; there was no mellow to be had when staring at credit card statements with that many zeros.

The doll was splayed on her back, across a notice from the Sunnydale Power Company about doing their best in “trying times.” Her green eyes were the rolling kind, the ones that opened and shut depending on what angle you held her in. 

Buffy scooped her up. _Come on, creepy._

“I don’t care what you or the other girls say, I killed one of those vampires tonight,” said a voice from the darkness behind her.

Buffy whirled around to find a dark shape on the sofa, watching her. She had been wrong for thinking Dru’s doll was the creepiest thing in the room.

“Kennedy?” Buffy said when her eyes had adjusted.

The potential slayer was sitting on the edge of the couch, arms crossed and body tightly coiled for a fight they apparently had to have now.

“I know you killed a vampire,” Buffy said wearily. “I saw the dust. But the Turkish ones aren’t taken down that easily. Maybe it was just a very unfortunate-looking vampire.”

“Oh my god, it’s _Turok Han_ ,” Kennedy said. “And I’m telling you I killed one.”

Buffy was suddenly overtaken by a tsunami of déjà vu, only like . . . flipped déjà vu. Because she could have sworn that she and her mother had been in these exact same positions thousands of times, her on the couch, insisting something that sounded crazy: _I don’t know where that slime on the carpet came from, Mom. Maybe wine does that when it dries_ or _The high school started, like, this newfangled librarian mentor program, very experimental, and that’s why Mr. Giles is always around_ or _Riley and just I study when I stay over at his dorm._

There was a part of Buffy that wanted desperately to unleash her inner mean girl now, make up for her shock before by cutting Kennedy down to size with quippy insults until she knew exactly who the slayer in this equation was, no matter what the Council had said about her love life, ‘cause, hey, guess what, all the judgyness in the world hadn’t stopped them from being blown up.

But the other part, the larger parts, were just tired. She missed being on the other side of this scene. She missed her mom. She missed not feeling a million years older than everyone else around her.

Buffy sighed. “Look, we can talk about it in the morning. We will also talk about exactly what parts of my life are off the table for public debate, because, really—“

She stopped when she realized Kennedy’s gaze had drifted to Buffy’s feet, and her head was tilted in a way that suggested her attention was on another speaker in the room, and that Kennedy wasn't liking what that speaker was saying. 

Buffy’s heart chilled, her eyes darting around the dark corners. “Kennedy, is someone here with us?”

Kennedy’s eyes snapped to Buffy’s, face suddenly pale. She tried to cover it up with the usual self-confidence, but it was only half-successful.“I’m going to bed.”

She swooped off the couch and made for the stairs, but Buffy followed her. It was making sense now—Kennedy had never been all yay-rah _Buffy, Buffy, she’s our gal_ but up until what happened tonight, she’d never thought the girl outright hated her. Who knew how long the First had been chatting her up.

“Is it your Watcher? Someone from the Council?” Buffy said, realizing that the First had recently gotten a new influx of faces to choose from. “Because that thing will wear anyone’s face, say anything to turn us against one another.”

Kennedy didn’t respond, just began to stomp up the stairs.

“Kennedy!” Buffy said.

The girl turned around at the top. “If you don’t want us to turn on you, maybe start trusting us. I know that Turok-Han you killed was strong. I also know that I killed one tonight.” Her eyes flicked to the doll in Buffy’s hands. “Maybe instead of convincing me I didn’t do what I know I did, we should be working on figuring out what that means.”

And with that, she disappeared into Dawn’s bedroom.


	8. Chapter 8

Kennedy’s words rang in Buffy’s ears as she headed for the porch. Given that it had taken her longer than expected inside, a part of her feared that Spike had given up and retreated to the basement, thinking himself forgotten all over again.

But no, there he was, jacket back off, staring off into the night like it owed him money. 

“Sorry,” she said, shutting the door behind her. “Got caught up by . . . well, just got caught up.”

“S’alright,” he said, his voice clipped. From the way he was holding himself—still and stiff, no slumping—she was starting to suspect that what she’d largely been reading as anger was in fact tightly controlled pain.

She took a spot next to him, putting Dru’s doll and the med kit by her hip. Flipping open the lid, she removed the small bottles of alcohol and saline and betadine. Typically, she was the one on the receiving end of stitches, and then only rarely. Not to mention she’d never had a vampire patient before, as undead First Aid tended to be more along the lines of “Drink a gallon of blood and pass out on top of the nearest stone slab.” But blood wasn’t working and who knew what Spike was actually vulnerable to right now.

_ Irrigation first,  _ said a moldy old brain cell left over from one of Giles’s early classes in battlefield medicine, back before he threw up his hands and resigned himself to her time-honored strategy of winging it. Still, as she began mixing the betadine and saline, she couldn’t help her brain from ticking through the new items on her to-do list now that Kennedy was sticking to her story of killing a super vamp. She needed to talk to the girls, get a better sense of what had happened tonight back at the old mansion. She should also take that opportunity to ask if they, too, were being haunted by any particularly tweedy ghosts. Logically, Buffy understood that this wasn’t the actual Council come back to wag fingers at her, but still . . . She couldn’t help but wonder what evil the First was whispering about her while wearing Quentin Travers’s weaselly face.  _ Mucked up the line of succession and then didn’t even have the good sense to stay dead a second time! _

After that, she needed to swallow her pride and read Giles’s letter, then try to get ahold of him, which was not the easiest prospect these days. He had a cell phone, but more often than not it was uncharged because he either didn’t have an international adapter or he forgot about it, preferring instead to leave garbled messages on the answering machine that told you exactly where he was about to leave, with only minimal clues about his next stop. Sometimes, to cheer herself up, Buffy imagined him in a red fedora and trench coat, like some kind of super-geeky Carmen Sandiego, because it was the only way she could distract herself from the very  _ un _ cheerful fact that this was only going to result in more girls to house and protect.

Last but not least, she needed to figure out who kept eating all of the Cheez-Its. Or maybe she’d start with that, given it was low-hanging fruit. Cheesy fruit. 

“Think they’re mixed. Whatever they are.” 

Spike’s low voice startled her from her thoughts of Cheez-Its. She turned to find him studying her in the low light.

“Betadine,” she said. “Not really sure if you’re vulnerable to infection, so I’m playing it safe. Unless you want the story of William the Bloody to end in gangrene,” she joked.

He snorted. “Dunno. Can see it now.” He waved a limp hand in front of him. “‘He died as he lived. One big fucking cosmic joke.’”

Buffy froze, unsure how to respond to that, or the undercurrent of darkness beneath the sarcasm. Was that what he really thought? I mean, sure, his plans had a tendency to go sideways, but that was largely because they were generally evil and generally evil plans were meant to be thwarted. But what he had done here, with the soul, and with the trying . . . it was so big. It was so big that whenever she tried to figure out how to talk about it with him, it was like standing in front of a giant wall that stretched out for miles and trying to figure out how to get your arms around it. Not to mention the barbed wire lining it in certain places. 

Before she could figure out how to even start, Spike spoke again, the dark undercurrent gone. 

“Who were you talking to in there?”

“Oh.” This subject wasn’t exactly on her favorites list either. “Kennedy.”

There was a long pause. “Dark-haired bird? Old money?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said. “There was a . . . moment on patrol.”

“What kind of moment?” he said.

She indicated that he should lift up his shirt so she could start with the doctoring. She needed to be doing something if they were going to talk about this.

“She thinks she killed one of the super vampire things,” Buffy said, then started to pour the disinfectant on the wound, the dark liquid staining his pale skin like the blood that should have been there. “And she did kill something, but given I just barely killed the one guarding you, I don’t see how it could be. But she seems so . . .  _ sure.” _

Enviably sure. These days, Buffy would like to have some of that certainty in a bottle. She’d dab it on her wrists and behind her ears like perfume every morning. 

She heard him hiss as the mixture settled into the edges of the wound. “That all she said?” he added after a moment.

When she looked up, he was studying her in the low light, his chin tilted down. Not for the first time she wondered if destiny had known he would become a vampire when it gave him those cheekbones. They would have been a waste on anyone who didn’t live in the shadows.

She scooted back and busied herself with prepping the next step. A part of her was tempted to deflect again, but honestly, at this point, shields were down for the night. 

“Let’s just say she said some things that proved the Council wanted to make sure their little factory wasn’t going to keep spitting out Buffys,” she said, digging out the topical pain-killer.

“Well, their bloody loss then,” he said.

She turned back to him instinctively, only to find he wasn’t even looking at her, instead studying the wound she had just disinfected.

“Probably just know that they could give a girl four hundred watchers a century to train her, and she still wouldn’t be able to lift a pinky to you,” he continued.

He said it with the same matter-of-fact tone one would use when saying  _ Water is wet  _ or  _ The sky is blue  _ or  _ Sunnydale citizens are morons _ , and it filled her body with an embarrassing rush of gratitude.

“Like the monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare?” Buffy said, hearing a tremble in her own voice.

“ _ No,”  _ he said, looking up. _ “ _ Because the monkeys in the room end up writing  _ Hamlet _ . Those wankers had no hope of churning out a you.”

That was the thing about Spike. No matter what was between them at any given moment, his final word on Buffy was always that she was great. He’d tell her when she was being stupid, or not being truthful, or being downright terrible, but at the end of the day, she always got the benefit of the doubt.

Emotion swelled in her chest, and she didn’t even know what she was saying until it was out.

“I don’t think you’re a joke,” she blurted, and when he frowned, took a deep breath and continued more eloquently. “I know this can’t have gone the way you imagined, with the First hauntings, and the basement craziness, and the epitome of all evil meddling with your brain, but I’m . . .” She paused, persevered. “I’m glad that you’re here. And I meant what I said before the First took you. I believe in you.” She paused. “And we’re going to fix you.  _ I’m  _ going to fix you.”

He looked at her then, but said nothing. It seemed she had made him speechless, which was never good, because she was terrible at filling those empty spaces. She felt a fluttering panic, and turned to grab Dru’s doll.

“Like I said, I was able to find the Du Lac thingy and the book—they’re upstairs.” She started to ramble. “The reason I haven’t done the spell yet is because the white-magic kind takes a special ingredient we don’t have, but Anya promises it should be coming in any day now. Once it does, we’ll figure out where Dru’s coming from using this.”

She thrust the doll at him. When he didn’t take it immediately, she set it in his lap.

“That’s what I was getting from the mansion tonight while out with the girls.” She was full-on babbling now. “Once we know where she’s coming from, maybe you can help us figure out how she’ll travel so we can come up with an estimate of when and how she’ll arrive. Then we can be there to meet her and convince her to help.”

There, that was most of it. She still needed to figure out how to broach the rest of what the spell was going to do, but she was working up to that. 

Spike was staring at the doll. After a few seconds, he picked it up, shaking it so that the blond curls fell back from its face. Then he frowned.

“That was hers, right?” Buffy said anxiously. “I didn’t figure that Angel was sitting around playing with dolls, but—” She stopped.  _ Should _ she have considered Angel was sitting around playing with dolls?

“It was hers,” Spike said. “Just funny this is the one you picked.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated, and from the way his gaze left hers then, she could tell that he regretted mentioning anything at all. 

“When we first came here, she was at me to find her a new doll,” he said. “And not just any doll. Had to be blond, and had to have green eyes. Not like it was the first time she’d made requests, but we had a whole heap of more important business to deal with, like a tiny undead wanker and, well . . . you.” He looked at her then, gave a faint smile. “Do you know how hard it is to find a green-eyed blonde? Blue-eyed ones hanging off the rafters, but not green. Finally found one in that antique store used to be on Main. Nicked it, brought it to her. Only for her to immediately hurl it in a corner and start screaming at it.”

“Not really seeing the funny yet,” she said, finding she also regretted starting them down this particular memory lane. She used to think it was because of the “ick” factor of hearing about vampire exploits, and yeah, that was a big part of it, but she could admit now that a part was also her own insecurity. It had been the same with Angel, hearing about all these decades he’d lived before she’d even become a blip on his radar. Back at Hemery, in her freshman biology class, she had been seated by a poster depicting human evolution, and okay, maybe what she had with Angel, and Spike, was like the  _ homo sapiens  _ of relationships on the timeline, but the monkeys got along so well for so many years, and had all sorts of fun, uncomplicated monkey history.

“When I asked why she made me run all over the bloody town if she was just going to put baby in the corner, she’d glare at me and mutter about beginnings of endings and a great calamity and all other sort of rot. She’d do that sometimes. Take something she was worried about and put it in a doll. Wonder sometimes . . .”

Spike trailed off at that.

“Wonder what?” Buffy asked.

“Wonder if the doll was meant to be you. Wonder if she already knew I was gone. Or going.”

Silence fell between them then, and Buffy wished the crickets would chirp louder and reach the grand overture of their little cricket orchestra to cover the sound of her own beating heart.  _ Because God help me, Buffy, it’s always been you.  _ That was what Spike has said those few weeks ago, those weeks that felt like a lifetime ago now, and that was essentially what he was saying again, and while there had been a time when all she wanted him to do was stop it—stop saying things like that because  _ this wasn’t real _ —she was finding that they didn’t bother her anymore. That in fact she liked hearing them, and maybe always had, which was the problem, wasn’t it? Because this wasn’t something she should feel, not given everything that happened between them. Not given everything that was still happening now.

And yet. Still.

_ Mine. Mine. Mine.  _ That was a chorus ringing in her head when she thought of him with anyone else, and while she didn’t think they should ever be allowed to brush even the most unsexy of body parts together again--pancreases? pancrei?--the truth was she definitely didn’t want anyone else to have him either.

Ever.

She also didn’t really like hearing about him with others in the past, which was quite the pickle-y situation given the spell she’d be doing any day now. 

He slid his glance to her, suddenly wry. “Or she could have just wanted to shag Angelus, who knows.” He paused. “Doesn’t really matter now in any case.” With that, he gave her back the doll, and then gestured to his side. “Should we, uh . . .?” 

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” After putting the doll behind her, she swiped some sanitizer on her hands and then looked for the bottle with the topical numbing agent. She knew from personal experience it didn’t really do much more than make it so you felt nothing  _ but  _ the needle prick, but maybe it would take some of the sting out. 

When she turned back, he was back to holding his shirt up, and she got to work, daubing some on, then opening a needle pack and threading it with the first stitch. 

“Have you done this before?” he asked right before the point of the needle touched his skin. 

She pulled back, startled and a little offended. This was someone she’d seen grab the shaft of a sword with his bare hands, and yet he was side-eyeing her like some sort of mad butcher.

“I mean, I’m usually on the other end, but I know the basic theory,” she drawled. “And other than taking you to a hospital--where the doctors would probably have even  _ more  _ questions than usual these days--we’re kind of light on options. Unless you want me to go shake Andrew out of his  _ Star Wars  _ sleeping bag.” 

“No. Was just curious, is all.” 

“Mm,” she said, and tried again. This time, when there was no objection, she made the first stitch. He set his jaw as she tied it, but said nothing. 

“So,” she said, setting her own as she prepared the next one. The wound was probably going to need twelve stitches all told, but that wasn’t the reason. She had promised she would tell him everything, and everything meant the fact that the spell was about to dig up a whole lot of his romantic history and send it on a crash course for Sunnydale, and honestly, if someone had told her she could avoid this conversation by having all of her own teeth pulled out, one by one, she would be climbing into the dentist’s chair right now. But it had to happen. It had to. 

“Did you and Drusilla ever, you know, take a break?” 

He gave a sharp hiss, one she honestly didn’t know whether to attribute to the second stitch or the deeply personal question. 

“Why you asking?” 

“Just curious, is all.” 

“I mean, yeah. Was a long stretch during the war--the second one, that is--and then another right before the whole thing in Prague.” 

“Prague?” 

“Where she got sick, thus facilitating our move to good ol’ Sunnydale,” he said as she threaded another stitch. 

“You never told me how that happened,” she said, leaning back in. She was glad to have something to do that gave her an excuse not to meet his eyes--not that she needed to look at him directly to sense that he was finding her sudden curiosity puzzling. 

“Still don’t really know,” he said slowly. “We’d only been in Prague a few weeks when some holy types found where we’d been staying and chased us to a bridge. Woke up by the river, stake in my chest just shy of my heart. By the time I’d fought through half the bloody city to find word of where they’d taken her, he’d . . . done something to her. Tortured her, yeah, but more than that. When she would talk, she kept talking about boxes of shadows and husks without nuts.”

Dread began to cluster in Buffy’s stomach. She tried to think back to the few times she’d seen Dru before the ritual. As a ghostly figure in a playground. As a hostage in that stupid wannabe vampire club. Both times her skin had been pristine—she remembered even thinking that as she gazed down from the rooftop, a stray  _ Before you dust her, remember to ask about her skincare routine. _

“But she didn’t seem to have any wounds when you came to Sunnydale,” Buffy said. “If she was tortured . . .” What if what was going on with Spike now  _ wasn’t  _ the same thing at all? She’d been banking on this ritual working, but she knew in reality all this hope was a house of cards. But no—she felt it was right. She  _ felt _ it. 

“No,” Spike said after a beat. “But not because she healed on her own. After I pulled her out of that dungeon, I found a flat for us to hole up in for a while until she healed, brought her . . . ” He swallowed. “Brought her blood,” he said in a way that made it clear that was just a euphemism for bodies with blood in them. “But she wouldn’t drink it, kept spitting it in my face, telling me you shouldn’t put good wine at empty tables. Thought it was just the torture had just driven her into one of her moods.” He winced as she finished the fifth stitch. “Normally, would have waited it out, but heard the inquisitor I’d killed had mates and those mates were sniffing around.”

“So then how . . .”

“There was a warlock in those parts at the time, said to be good at necromancy. Took her there, threatened to kill him if he couldn’t figure out a way to fix her.”

“And he did?” Buffy said as she tied the knot on the sixth. “Well, then maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong and we should—”

“No,” Spike cut her off. “He said all he could do was take away the current wounds.”

“Oh. Well, still, that sounds—”

Spike shook his head, sharp. “I had to bring him another vampire. Problem was, the group took Dru had cleared most others out of the city. So I …”

Spike stopped, his eyes going to some distant place, but Buffy had a feeling she knew where this was going.

“So you made one,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Wasn’t one for doing it normally because—well, because. But found a girl, turned her, brought her back to the good doctor, who restrained her with some enchanted chains. He cut her where Dru was cut, broke her bones where Dru was broken. Then he said some sort of mumbo-jumbo and she healed, right in front of my eyes.”

“And then . . .” 

“And then I kept Dru in cotton wool after that, staying underground until I could get her to the Hellmouth. Thought maybe old Heinrich might have some answers, but of course when I got here, you had turned him into dust. So started on plan B.” Spike stopped abruptly then. “Figure you know the rest.” 

Buffy went back to finishing the second half of the stitches. Spike could still tell a story--and god knows that getting details out of him was still easier than it had ever been getting details out of Angel, who gave new meaning to the saying “blood from a stone,” although who wanted to get blood out of stones anyway? But whereas Spike’s narratives used to be dripping with bravado, this was told dutifully, with a flatness that suggested he was telling it from a place outside himself. Which made sense, given the soul, but for the first time Buffy wondered if asking him questions about who was going to show up in Sunnydale was more than she should put him through. But if she didn’t . . .

“There,” she said, tying off the last stitch and scooting back. “Done.” They weren’t the neatest stitches she’d ever seen, but undead beggars couldn’t really be choosers, now could they? 

After inspecting her work, he gave a grunt and dropped his shirt. “Ta, pet.” 

“That should hold you for a while at least,” she said. “But Spike, about the spell . . .”

“What happens if this whole thing doesn’t work?” he blurted. 

“What do you mean?” she said. “I mean, I know, there’s been a delay, but--”

“I mean it seems like we’re just assuming what happened to me is the same thing that happened to Dru. So what happens if that assumption turns us into the proverbial asses?” 

Realizing her mouth was hanging open, she clicked her teeth shut. “Well, then we look for other--” 

“I’m rotting, Buffy,” he said flatly. “Can smell it. Don’t know if you can yet, but woke up this morning with it in my nose and it’s only going to get worse with every fight that takes another bite out of me and gives rot a chance to set in.” He looked at his feet. “That’s why I was short earlier. Got in my head about it, but I’m not anymore.”

When Buffy didn’t reply, he sighed. 

“Look. I don’t want to be out of this fight either. But eventually I’m going to start looking like the shambling corpse I actually am, and at that point, I’m a liability. I know your watcher thinks it already, and he’s not wrong.” After a moment of hesitation, he took her hand. “I appreciate all that you’re doing. God knows it’s far more than I deserve. But I’ve watched someone die by inches before, and if it’s that or dust, I prefer dust.” 

Something thick and heavy was clustering in her throat. “Spike,” she croaked. “If you think I’m going to--” 

“No. Not asking that of you. Will walk out into the sun if it comes to that. Just telling you that if it happens, it’s not your fault. You’ve done too much already.” 

“Spike . . .” she said, gripping his hand harder, but before she could say anything else there was a shuffle of footsteps outside of the fence. That was when she realized that the crickets had stopped their chirping. 

She leapt to her feet just as a slimy antlered demon walked into her backyard. Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt that would have put even Xander’s former basement collection to shame, he was carrying a small white bag. 

“Who the hell--” She cut off when the demon began to scratch violently at the base of one of his horns. If this was the opening salvo of an attack, it was nontraditional to say the least. 

“Whew. That’s better. Sorry, man, molting season.” He raised the bag to squint at the label. “I’ve got a delivery for an Anya Jenkins here from Magic Liquidators? They want to tell her sorry for the delay, but also that the agreement she signed explicitly states vengeance is prohibited against them even in light of missing the estimated shipping window.” 

The Lover’s Root. It was finally here. At 2 a.m. in the morning, but maybe that was business hours for the demon world. 

“Oh! Right,” Buffy said, swiftly crossing the yard to take it from him and then discreetly wiping a hand on her pants when she realized the bag was . . . damp. “Thanks so much.” 

When he just blinked at her, she realized that maybe he was waiting for a tip. She dug through the pockets of her jeans, but only discovered a crumpled one-dollar bill. Was this enough? She didn’t think she had any cash, and--

“Chaos demon,” Spike offered from behind her. “Likes slugs.” 

“Oh. Well. Unfortunately, I don’t have any slugs on me right now _ ,  _ but I could probably . . .” Buffy looked at the surrounding bushes. Where did slugs live, usually? Should she start turning over rocks? 

“Aw, it’s alright,” the chaos demon said, though clearly disappointed. “Learned not to expect anything long ago.” With a wave that made Buffy jump back for fear of being slimed, he headed toward the back exit. “You folks have a nice night.” 

“Sorry!” she called after him, but he was already gone. 

When she turned around, it was to find Spike watching her, amused. 

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” When he just continued to smile, she held up the bag. “This is the last ingredient we needed for the spell, so you can put any thoughts of walking into the sun on hold, mister. Not that I’m ever going to let you do that anyway.” 

While Spike made an effort to keep the smile, she could tell that it was only the shell now. “Sure,” he said lightly. 

That’s when Buffy realized that Spike didn’t have much hope of this working. That in his mind, there was a day coming when he thought he’d be walking out to greet the day and not coming back. He wasn’t going to take it lying down, but he was also preparing for the worst. What’s more, there was a chance that when Buffy told him that healing him meant prying open his soulless history and giving it a one-way ticket to Sunnydale, he’d tell her not to do it at all. 

So she wasn’t going to tell him. And that was that. 

“Is there, uh, anything you need me to do to help?” he said, eyeing the bag. “With the spell? Don’t really love sitting here all useless-like, but don’t want to get in your way.” 

Buffy felt herself blushing, for little did he know, he already had a starring role in the spell. One that she would absolutely never, ever tell him. 

“Nah,” she said. “Willow and I have it handled. Might need your input on Drusilla after, but otherwise, just keep doing what you’re doing.” 

“Which is . . . nothing,” he said. 

“Right,” she said brightly, then headed for the back door. But as she passed him, she touched his shoulder. “This is going to work, Spike. I know it.” And then she scooped up the doll and kit and left him there before he could say anything to convince her otherwise. 

_____

Upstairs was dark, the many residents of her home having finally settled down for the night. Light snores filtered out from her and Dawn’s rooms, both of which had their doors open just in case an alarm needed to be sounded. 

Willow’s door at the end of the hall remained closed. 

Buffy walked to stand in front of it, putting a hand up to see if she could still feel the dark, buzzing energy. When she didn’t, she tried the knob and pushed it open with a creak. 

It was still weird to enter this room as a guest, even though she’d been the first one to suggest switching when it was decided that Willow would be coming back. Willow hadn’t done much with it to make it her own; the boy band posters were still there, and the pictures on the dresser were still the ones of her and Willow and Xander so many years ago. The majority of Willow’s things remained packed in the suitcases piled under the window. 

The only real difference was the figure curled up in a fetal position on top of the white comforter, still wearing her clothes and boots from earlier. 

“Willow . . .” Buffy whispered. 

When there was no response, Buffy turned to leave, figuring her friend asleep, but then there was a tremulous call of her name. 

Willow had lifted her head, and the moonlight illuminated her face. Buffy was relieved to see that her eyes seemed normal, although her hair . . . she couldn’t tell if it was a trick of the darkness, but it didn’t seem to be her usual brassy red. 

“Xander told me what happened,” Buffy said. “How are you doing?” 

Willow’s bottom lip trembled. “Oh. Good. Good. Just needed a little time to regroup. How was the outing with the girls?” 

Boy, was that ever a question. “Mostly fine. I’ll tell you tomorrow.” 

Willow put her head back down, eyes trained on the sloping wall. Gingerly, Buffy took a seat on the end of the bed, trying to figure out what to say next. She didn’t want to just leave, and yet at the same time, she didn’t even know where to start when it came to having a conversation that didn’t have to do with whatever great evil, or suspected evil, they were meant to be fighting that day. They would joke, and they would laugh, but sometimes it felt like nothing more than muscle memory. 

She was still debating when she noticed a black line of writing snake across Willow’s forearm. Startled, she scooted back. 

“Willow . . .” 

“It happens sometimes,” Willow said quickly. “When I use a spell from those books. The ones I sucked when Tara . . . when Tara. It will go away. I can make it go away. I just have to . . . lie here for a while.” She raised her head to look Buffy in the eye. “I’ll be right as rain tomorrow. Really. You can go.” 

Buffy’s mouth was open to say that she couldn’t leave her like this when Willow’s eyes fell to the doll and bag in Buffy’s lap. 

“Oh,” Willow said flatly. “You need me to do the locator spell.” 

In truth, Buffy had forgotten she was holding them. She looked down to meet the doll’s blank-eyed stare. 

“No, not really. I mean, at least not now. You should definitely take a break from--” 

“ _ Resigno _ ,” Willow said, and immediately the doll began to glow orange, as if lit by an internal fire. The next thing Buffy knew, its porcelain skin was burning her hands. Acting on instinct, she threw it away from herself. By the time it hit the carpet, it was nothing more than a pile of ash. 

Willow went back to staring at the wall. “Drusilla’s in New York,” she said, voice cold. 

“How--” 

“Don’t need ingredients when I’m like this,” Willow said. “I am the magic. But again--it’s fine. You can go.” 

Buffy could go, it was true. She knew if she stood up and walked out that door, tomorrow morning Willow would act like nothing had happened, maybe a little shuttered, maybe a little fragile, but eager to help out with the magic in any way she could, because the three of them were nothing if not tied to this mission. They wouldn’t talk about how they were feeling beyond that. They wouldn’t talk about how nothing was like it used to be. Everyone would keep performing their own little highwire act, so intent on the thin line in front of them that they couldn’t see everyone else was wobbling too. 

Instead, Buffy placed the bag with the Lover’s Root on the nightstand, kicked off her own boots, and curled herself around her friend. 

As soon as she did, Willow’s shoulders began to shake. Soon, the room echoed with loud, gasping cries. 

“It’s just so hard to be here,” Willow said between sobs. “So close to where Tara--I just, I know I need to be. I want to be. I want to help, I do, but every time I walk past that room I just see her on the ground and then all this darkness swims up. And what if it takes over? And I let you down again or  _ worse _ and--”

“Shh,” Buffy soothed. “You won’t.” 

Dimly, she had understood what Willow must be going through. But her focus had been elsewhere, on the list of responsibilities piling up in her head, on the weaknesses in their defenses, on the very obvious problems with Spike, and she had pushed this down, grumbling internally that everyone wasn’t doing enough, when, instead, they all had their own lists and worries and ghosts ricocheting around in their heads. 

“I didn’t come in here for you to do another spell,” Buffy said quietly, and then when Willow sucked in a breath, added, “But I understand why you thought that. I’m sorry if I’ve been treating you like a tool to use. I know what it feels like to be whipped around like some sort of problem-solving missile, and I hate it.” 

Willow sniffled. “But I am the only one who can . . .”

“I know,” Buffy said. “And I’m the only one who can punch demons right in their faces, but it still sucks sometimes.” 

Willow gave a little hiccupping laugh at that, which gave her enough strength to say the other thing that needed to be said. 

“Anyway, thanks for saving everyone tonight,” she said, not really understanding why it felt so hard for her to say that these days, but it did. Maybe it all had to do with what she’d told Holden, about feeling worse and better than everyone else at the same time. When she had to save the day, she resented it; when someone else did, she felt like a failure. 

She should work on that. But with, like, a real therapist. If any of them were still around to shrink heads after the apocalypse. 

“Oh, you know, it was no biggie,” Willow said. 

Buffy pulled back to look at Willow’s hair. “You know what, I think you’re a redhead again,” she said, and it was true--the blackness was gone. She sat up and started to crawl off the bed. “And on that note, I should probably--” 

“You can stay,” Willow said, rolling over and sitting up. “I know this means you lost your bedroom to the chattering hordes.”

Buffy groaned--she had almost forgotten what was waiting for her. Willow’s room did look tantalizingly empty in comparison. And it wasn’t like she could do anything about the spell with what was essentially several volleyball teams’ worth of girls in her room anyway. 

“It’ll be like a slumber party!” Willow continued. “I mean, a really boring,  _ super  _ depressing one, but--wait!” Her face lighting up like she’d had the most brilliant idea ever, Willow reached down into the space between the bed and the wall to reveal a bright red box. “Cheez-Its! I saw the girls eyeing them and made a not-at-all self-serving executive decision.” 

As Buffy stared at her friend, she felt a weight momentarily lift. Tomorrow would come too soon, with its Kennedy-shaped problems along with it, but for now . . . 

Buffy sat back down. “Good call,” she said, then held out her hand. “Now give me cheesy things.” 

For now, the rest of the world could wait. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Big, big thanks to MaggieLaFey, without whom you probably wouldn't be reading this chapter and the one that will follow soon. When I started this fic so very many months ago, these were the chapters that loomed largest. Loomed so large, in fact, that a good reason I paused in writing them was that it was so much easier to just let them remain in my head, all perfect and uncomplicated. But I believe in writing what challenges and scares you, and thus this wouldn't let me go. So here I am, largely due to the her really wonderful and warmhearted willingness to listen to my various anxieties and questions. Any mistakes are still mine thanks to the inability to leave it alone.

In the end, the Cheez-It victory was the only one Buffy could fully claim. After waking up late and scrambling to the school, her attempts to reach Giles in between student meetings only ended in a “This voice mailbox is full” message and a confused conversation with a hotel clerk Buffy was convinced was speaking some sort of obscure demon language. And when she attempted to corral the potentials into a serious talk after dinner, it didn’t go as expected. 

“Look, we all know that the First Evil has been playing games with us,” she said to the girls who were hanging around in the living room, more silent than usual despite the fact the house had been mostly put back to rights. Xander and his holy, holy construction crew had come during the day, and someone had even unearthed a stash of scented candles. While the blend of “Christmas Memories” and “Bahama Breeze” was a bold choice, Buffy had to admit that it was better than “Melted Eyeballs” and “Whisper of Slime.” 

Kennedy was sitting with her jeaned legs up in the armchair in the corner, her face unreadable as she toyed with the house’s lone remaining coaster. Buffy had decided to save further confrontation until she’d had a chance to speak with Giles, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some good old-fashioned passive-aggressive confrontation. 

“You all may have been receiving visits from people you’ve lost--or maybe even people you don’t know,” she said, eyes on Kennedy, “but you have to remember that it’s _not_ them. It’s this thing, pure evil. Everything it says is designed to twist you up in knots and make _us_ weaker.” 

While Kennedy met Buffy’s gaze, her expression remained impassive. The other girls exchanged a few nervous glances, but no one said anything. 

“It recently gained access to a whole lot of information it can use to hurt us because it killed the Council,” Buffy said. “So we need to be vigilant and we need to share what it’s telling us, no matter how painful.” 

When she shot another hard look at Kennedy, the potential unfolded her legs and made for the stairs, zigzagging through the other girls. “I’m going to go to bed. See you all tomorrow.”

They all listened to Kennedy’s footsteps as she disappeared. 

“Is she allowed to do that?” Amanda whispered from the floor. Truthfully, Buffy was wondering the same thing; it’s not like she’d really set any ground rules for this operation, like _Th_ _ou must not ditch group meetings_. But before she could try to frame what just happened, one of the potentials on the couch--quiet, sweet-faced, silky dark hair in a bob--raised her hand. _Chloe._

“What if it’s not making threats?” she said softly. “Or really telling you to do anything. What if it’s . . .” She looked around nervously, hands fiddling with the bottom of a faded midriff top sporting Winnie the Pooh. “What if it’s . . . being nice?” 

“Nice how?” Buffy said. 

Chloe took a deep breath. “The last couple nights . . . I’ve been seeing my grandmother. She sits on the window ledge and she tells me how proud she is of me, and how much she misses me, but also how much she worries about me because she knows what’s coming, and”--she stopped to visibly swallow--“how we’re all going to die, no matter what the skinny blonde says. She says she’s keeping a place for me in heaven.” 

Before Buffy could respond, Rona, on the other end of the couch, sat back and crossed her arms. “Mine’s my friend Michelle. She died in an apartment fire last year. Spends half the night talking about boys we used to mess with in fifth grade but then she’ll tell me I can’t trust any of these girls to have my back the same way.” She went quiet. “I know it’s not her, but it . . . feels like it. Feels like . . . talking to her again.” 

A silence descended on the room then, as eyes turned inward, and Buffy realized that it wasn’t ghosts of the Council that were the real threat here--or at least not with anyone but Kennedy. 

“I know it’s hard. But you have to tell it you know what it is and to go away,” Buffy said, immediately hating how out-of-touch old fogey she sounded. _Just tell the Root of all Evil that you’re high on life and walk away!_ She had worked with teenagers enough now to sense when a wall was coming down, after which you’d get nothing but _sure_ s and _uh-huh_ s and _can I go back to class now?_

“I know it’s hard because my mom has come to me,” she blurted, then wanted to immediately suck it back in. But then she saw that she had every eye in the room. “She came to me and she said I looked tired and needed to rest. That there was always going to be evil in the world because it was the natural order of things, but that it shouldn’t always be my job to fix it. She told me everything I wanted to hear. It sounded like her. It looked like her--God, it looked like her. But it wasn’t her. Because I know my mom, and by the time she died--” Buffy said, throat suddenly tight. “By the time she died, she knew that it was my job to fix it. And she was . . . proud of that.” 

As she spoke, two truths became evident: her mom _had_ been proud of her for being the Slayer, there in the end; would have understood she couldn’t just chuck the responsibility the second it got hard, no matter how much both of them had once wished it were different. And two, the tingle in the corners of her eyes was definitely incoming tears. 

She cleared her throat, willed them away. “So I know it’s hard. I know it’s--”

“How did she die?” Vi said softly from one of the armchairs, face full of sympathy. “I mean, was it . . . vampires?” 

“Oh.” Buffy shook her head. “Um, no. Brain tumor. Or, the surgery to fix a brain tumor. We’d thought she was fine, but then one day I came home and she was . . . gone.” Instinctively, her eyes flew to the couch currently covered in potentials; most days, it was just a couch--had to be just a couch because there was no way in hell the budget would stretch in a way that would allow it not to be--but in a second, it became _the_ couch. 

“Damn, that’s rough,” Rona said. “I’m sorry.” 

The girls murmured echoing apologies. 

“Thanks,” Buffy said, then scrambled to figure out how to regain her teacherly footing. “But I guess what I’m saying is . . .” 

“Well, I think that’s the last of it!” Willow said from the doorway, her voice almost as bright as the paisley shirt she was wearing, an earthy patchwork number. She, Anya, and Dawn had been upstairs moving the girls’ sleeping bags back into Willow’s room for the evening. 

Dawn was looking at Buffy with a strange expression. Before Buffy could say anything to her sister, Willow clapped her hands. 

“Who wants ice cream?” she asked the gathered girls before her eyes came back to Buffy. “Thought we could take a field trip that doesn’t involve stabbing things other than chocolate chips. If it’s okay with you?” 

Buffy smiled. Last night, during what turned out to be a four-hour marathon chat, Willow had volunteered to take the girls out so that Buffy could have at least a quiet-ish house when it was time to do the spell. Xander was meeting them there. 

“Definitely of the okay. Bring me some back, even,” Buffy said, then held her breath that there’d be takers. 

Luckily, the lure of sprinkles and cookie dough proved formidable. The girls started to head to the doorway, the somber mood from before dissipating. A few even asked Buffy if she was sure she didn’t want to go, and if not, what kind they should bring her, which brought on a surprise burst of fuzzy feelings. At least until Anya cut through the current of departing potentials to take a seat on the recently vacated couch. 

“Well, count me out. Not going to spend any more time in this sororal nightmare than I have to.” 

“C’mon,” Willow said tightly. “I think there’s some fudge ripple with your name on it.” 

“Oh my God, really?” Anya said, horrified, then picked up an old issue of _Allure_ from the basket beneath the end table and started to flip through, shaking her head. “I’ll pass on psychic ice cream.” 

Flustered, Willow shot Buffy a helpless look. It wasn’t ideal, obviously, but it was fine; not like she couldn’t close the door to her bedroom. She gave a subtle nod. 

Willow sighed. “Fine, then. Dawn, can you go find Andrew and tell him we’re going out for ice cream and it’s mandatory unless he wants to be turned into a slug?” she asked sweetly, then waited until her sister had headed back upstairs to pull Buffy aside to whisper. “Come to the kitchen for a sec.” 

The kitchen was its usual post-dinner mess, although a small spot had been cleared on the island. In it sat a steaming cup of tea. 

“I went ahead and did the first part for you,” Willow said. “Just to make it easy.” 

A pungent mix of rosemary, caraway, and something called eyebright, the tea was the first step of the spell. As Willow had explained last night, all of those ingredients were meant to improve memory, as was the small incantation you were to say while making it. Buffy didn’t think remembering sex with Spike was going to be a problem--in fact, a part of her suspected she’d secretly grown a whole lobe devoted to it based on the number of times memories popped up while doing things like dropping ice cubes into a glass or looking at a rug or ( _stop_ ) pulling back a shower curtain--but as she was devoted to making this work, she took the cup gently by the sides and pulled it toward her. 

“Thanks, Will,” she said, bringing the cup up and taking a sip. She made a face. “Uh, wow. That’s . . . potent.” 

“Yeah, thinking it’s not going to be popping up on shelves anytime soon.” Her brow creased. “But you do need to drink it all. It’s important that you do every step, exactly--”

“As it’s written,” she said, then gave a reassuring smile. “I did get it around the, oh, eighty-third time.” 

Willow gave a little half-laugh. “Okay, okay. I know.” 

“And you’re sure you’re okay taking the girls out?” Buffy asked, fighting a nagging part of her that said staying home to heal a vampire rather than guard her clutch of baby slayers was a grave dereliction of duty. 

Willow held her fingers up and gave them a little wiggle. “Melty fingers, remember?” she said, then shook her head. “Not that I think it’ll come to that. And I spent the day brushing up on white magic spells in preparation.” 

Buffy put her cup down and gave her friend a side-hug, one that was rusty but earnest. “I know. Wouldn’t trust anyone more.” 

Her friend smiled at that, then headed out into the dining room, calling, “Okay! Last one there is a rotten demon egg.” 

Buffy stood there at the island as the house emptied of girls, listened to their chatter until it faded away and the only sound left was the _snick_ of Anya turning magazine pages. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t hear any signs of Spike rustling about in the basement; earlier, Dawn had reported that he’d managed to sleep through two loads of whites and one noisy one of jeans, but looked “about the same.” But “about the same” wasn’t good enough. 

Picking up her tea, Buffy climbed the stairs to her room, heart pounding more wildly with each step. 

Willow and Dawn had done their best to straighten it, even going so far as to make the bed, and for that Buffy was grateful. Putting the tea on the nightstand, she went over to her mom’s old heavy dresser and pushed it in front of the door, just in case. Then she opened the top drawer and took out _Sex Magick_ and the crumpled paper bag that held the rest of the supplies. 

After laying everything out on the bed, she picked up the tea, distracting herself from the bitter taste by surveying the gathered materials. Red-tapered wax candles, to surround the bed; she’d know the spell had worked because some of them would be lit--one for each lover she’d called. A small jar of Mistress of the Night oil, which Willow had explained last night was just a fancy name for tuberose oil, a common aphrodisiac that also tended to pop up in spells of astral projection. The spellbook itself, open to the correct page. A small pack of matches. A decorative plate that she typically used to hold abandoned jewelry. And the Lover’s Root, which she’d light and let burn for the duration of the spell, to “keep the path of memory open,” whatever that meant. 

Buffy picked the latter up and sniffed it. It had cost three months’ worth of electric bills, and yet it looked like an old wrinkled piece of ginger and smelled like someone’s shoe. 

“So sexy,” she muttered. In fact, in the Sexy Olympics, she was sure it placed second only to reliving intimate details of her mother’s death and then almost crying in front of a group of teenagers. 

Buffy sighed, and then drained the final dregs of her tea. Placing it back on the nightstand, she went to the pile of candles and started setting them up in a semi-circle around the bed, resisting the urge to speculate too much on what might happen if she _didn’t_ end up with enough. Would it not call whoever didn’t have a candle, she wondered as she placed the last one. Rocking back on her heels, she counted to make sure there were around thirty, which was ten times the number of Spike’s lovers she knew about. Overkill, maybe, but those recent breaks with Drusilla worried her, not to mention that threesomes and orgies were probably vanilla for vampires. And it would be naïve to think there hadn’t been victims--he’d admitted as much in the basement before the First had taken him, and even if he hadn’t, she’d heard enough about Angelus’s exploits that terrible year of Acathla to assume. Although, given the ultimate fate of vampires’ victims, it was likely this spell wouldn’t--

_Stop,_ she told herself firmly. The truth was it didn’t matter who might show up and why; she’d made her decision and she would deal with the consequences, whatever they may be. So there was no point in thinking about it until she saw whether or not the number of candles was an issue. 

Standing, she double-checked that the dresser hadn’t magically jumped from its guard position at the door and then reached for the buttons on the white shirt she’d chosen specifically for how much it screamed, “Hi! I am totally and completely competent in molding young minds!” When she reached the bottom one, she was surprised to feel her fingers almost trembling. 

After placing it neatly on the back of the chair in the corner, she started on her khaki pants, slipping out of them until she was standing in only her bra and panties, both a no-nonsense beige rather than the bright pastel rainbow of thong sets she’d once favored for their supreme powers of blowing boyfriendly minds. She told herself it was because laundry was such a communal free-for-all these days--and at least she’d escaped the no-bra-no-panties-who-cares ennui of last year--but the truth was that every morning when she reached into the drawer she just felt kind of _beige._

Before she could talk herself out of it, she unhooked the bra and slid the underwear down her legs. Then she walked to the foot of the bed, where the small vial of Mistress of the Night oil was waiting for her. Twisting off the cap, she went to the mirror and then dabbed some on her fingers, staining them a rich red-brown. As the book instructed, she placed three dots on what Willow had told her were chakras--“one on crown, one on heart, one on sacral root”--and then drew a line connecting them, starting with her head, passing between her breasts, and then ending just above her bikini line, which was, _oof,_ looking a little rough these days. 

Nervous, she checked the dresser in front of the door again, even though she was the only person in the house with the strength to bust past it. Well, besides Spike, and given how quickly he’d fled her bedroom when she’d tried to keep him there to recover, she doubted he’d be coming anywhere within ten feet of here. 

Now there was nothing left to do but get on the bed. 

Heart pounding wildly again, she gingerly stepped between the red candles and climbed on top of the sheets. Honestly, she wished she could hide under them, but she was afraid of disturbing the oil. 

Once she was settled, she took the Lover’s Root, set it on the decorative plate, and placed it in front of her crossed legs. Finally, she picked up the matches and read over the spell’s invocation one more time. 

_Lovers of my lover, Daughters of Eve,_

_I beseech thee to bring me the answer I seek._

_For I give Aphrodite this memory_

_And a boon to thee._

When she’d asked Willow last night what the spell meant by “boon,” she’d been surprised to see a flicker of doubt cross her friend’s face. “It probably refers to the thing you say when they come to you. You know, the thing that releases them and lets them leave. The ‘ _Merci, ma soeur_ ’ bit.” 

“Seems like a lame boon,” Buffy had said. “Like, ‘Here, you traveled all this way, watch me mangle some French.’” 

The Cheez-Its were fully defeated by that point, and the empty husk of the enemy lay in the corner. She was sitting with her back on the floor, painting her toenails a pale pink, while Willow stretched across the bed behind her, flipping through the book of protection spells. The only thing missing from their Sunnydale High days was an old Hindi movie no one understood. She wiggled her toes. They seemed happy about the long-overdue makeover. 

“As I said, Ava Charlebois was a woman who knew how to work her magical loopholes,” Willow said, turning a page. “There’s enough ra-ra sisterhood energy baked in to make this squeak into the white category. And of course the whole thing’s powered by sexual energy, rather than invoking any dark spirits.” 

Buffy’s hands stilled over the last toe. “What if . . .” 

She heard the whoosh of the book’s pages cease. “What if what?” Willow said gently after a few beats. 

“What if the sex was . . . dark,” Buffy said. When Willow didn’t say anything, she swiped some gloss over her pinkie toe and capped the polish, wishing she could put the cap back on this conversation as well. But it was something that had been bothering her, so she forced herself to place the bottle on the nightstand and turn and face her friend. 

Willow pushed the book away from her to sit up, her face full of concern. After a few seconds, she crawled down to sit next to Buffy. 

“Dark how?” she asked. “Like not consensual? Because--” 

“No!” Buffy said. “I mean, not except for the last bit, which didn’t get to sex and--” She stopped, let out a huff. “I mean _dark_ as in good in a ‘Buffy gets a happy’ sense--or, you know, ‘Buffy gets multiple happies’ sense--but not always nice. On either side.” Willow still had that slight frown on her lips, which was making Buffy nervous. “I only ask because the spell mentions Aphrodite, and even I know she’s, like, the love lady, and if we’re giving this memory I’m supposed to use to, you know--” She made a vague gesture that was somehow more embarrassing than if she had just come right out and said _get off,_ but thankfully Willow didn’t react. “If we’re giving this sexy memory to _her_ , what if she goes, ‘Never mind! Return to sender,’ and it falls down the chute like one of those rotten eggs in that Willy Wonka movie and--” 

She stopped when Willow touched her arm. “Hey. Aphrodite’s the goddess of a lot, including sexual ecstasy, so if that was working--and it sounds like it was--it will be fine.” She took a deep breath. “But, Buffy you don’t _have_ to do this.” 

“I do,” Buffy insisted. 

“You don’t,” Willow said, her hands returning to her lap and starting to flutter in the nervous way that had never really changed since high school, even though she was better at hiding it. Eyes downcast, she clasped them together. “Relationships can get dark, even when we don’t want them too. Tara . . . Tara forgave me for a lot, but she didn’t have to. I was lucky that she wanted to.” 

Buffy felt the old knee-jerk instinct to soothe. “I’m sure it wasn’t just lu--”

“It was,” Willow said firmly, looking up. “I didn’t deserve it. But she did, so I guess what I’m asking is: why do you want to do this?” 

“Because he’s downstairs rotting!” she said, her hands flying out and knocking over the nailpolish bottle on the nightstand. Angrily, she righted it. “Because I need him in this fight. Because he got the soul for me, even after I used him and treated him like _dirt_ , and it’s made him crazy and vulnerable to the ancient-est of evils.”

“But, I mean, if we really put on our objective hats, the soul is a good thing, no matter why it happened,” Willow said. “No one knew the First was going to swing by and take a drive-by shot at everyone’s mental health. _And_ just because he got it ‘for’ you, that doesn’t mean you owe him for something he did without asking whether it was something you wanted. Especially if he hurt you.” 

Buffy shook her head, frowning at her newly painted toenails. Everything Willow was saying made sense--objectively, soul-having Spike was a mark in the “yay” column. Not to mention it definitely made it easier to shove what had happened between them under the rug, because her brain could tell her that it was an entirely different person who had attacked her in that bathroom. And yet . . .

“It feels like I broke him,” Buffy said softly, looking at the hands she was clasping tightly in her lap. “Or, worse, like I killed him, or I guess the soulless him, and now he’s back as a ghost. But, like, a weird half-stranger ghost. And if I don’t find a way to fix him now, then I’m never going to get the chance to know who this Spike is. And I hate that because . . . because . . .”

“Because?” Willow said gently, her face free of judgement. 

“Because I’m not ready for him not to be here,” she finished, feeling like she’d just completed the longest cardio in her life. “Because I’m glad that he is.” And that was the plain truth of it, she realized. “I know. _I know_ how twisted it is. There’s everything he did to me, and to you and--” 

Willow made a long _pffft_. “Who cares what he did to me.” 

Buffy sniffed and looked up. “What?” 

“One thing about going veiny and trying to kill all of your friends and, oh, hey, _the entire world_? You kind of lose the ability to even pick up stones, let alone chuck ’em around all willy-nilly. If Dark Me had succeeded, my body count would have been bigger than Spike’s ever was, and yet here I am, sitting here next to you, in the room you gave me, thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have eaten so many Cheez-Its.” She gave a wry smile. “So yeah, not ever gonna make a scrapbook page about the whole bottle-in-face incident, but I really don’t care anymore what Spike’s done to me. I care how _you_ feel about what Spike’s done to _you_. That’s it. I mean it. See?” She made a cross over her heart. 

Buffy was overcome enough that all she could do was give a tremulous smile. Then it was Willow’s turn to shift her eyes away. 

“Not to mention . . . I know we weren’t exactly there for you last year, even before everything got bad. Piling on you for any choices you made just seems like, you know, a jerkface thing to do. Obviously, I can’t keep Xander from being Xander, and the stuff with Anya at the Magic Box doesn’t help, but I can talk to him if you want me to. Pull out a yellow-crayon moment of my own.” 

“No,” Buffy said, shaking her head. “I’m not ready for Xander. I don’t even think I was ready for this.” She gave a shuddering laugh. “And I know I’m not ready for tomorrow.” 

“It’ll be okay,” Willow had said. “I swear. Aphrodite’s a pretty open-minded gal.” 

_We’ll see about that_ , Buffy thought now, as her skin started to erupt in goosebumps. She didn’t remember her room ever being this cold--but then again, she hadn’t had many reasons to skip around it in the nude lately. 

With a deep breath, Buffy lit a match and touched it to the end of the Lover’s Root. After a second, the end caught fire, a flame briefly licking up then receding as it began to smoke and smolder. She rested it on the nightstand beside her, then laid back on the pillow, making sure her hair fanned out so nothing caught at her neck and distracted her. 

“Lovers of my lover,” she said to the ceiling, as she slid her hand down the side of her body, “Daughters of Eve, I beseech thee to bring me the answer I seek.” She breached the tight curls at the base of the line of oil. “For I give Aphrodite this memory,” she said, breath hitching as she slipped a finger between her folds, “and a boon to thee.” 

She closed her eyes, willing herself back to one of the many evenings she’d shown up at Spike’s crypt after a shift at the Restaurant We Never Speak Of. She’d chosen this particular memory because it was smack-dab in the middle of the least dramatic stretches in their short, dramatic relationship, at least if you were grading on a curve. The top level of his crypt had been empty, and so she’d gone to the ladder and descended into the depths of his bedroom below. 

And he’d been . . . and he’d been . . .

Buffy let out a frustrated huff, opening her eyes and pulling her fingers away to chill on her thigh. How was this supposed to work, really? It’s not like she ever touched herself to scenic reels of memory--it was more assorted flashes of feeling. The rumble of a growled “Fuck, Buffy” in her ear as he pressed her into the bed. The first moment of being filled, the particular angle he hit on that first thrust that always made her cry out despite herself. The give of his cool skin beneath her teeth when she bit down on his neck, the fact he only thrust harder when she bit deeper. He would bite her bottom lip sometimes before pulling out of a kiss. She’d liked that. She liked that. 

She slid her fingers back to her clit, as she was definitely feeling the tinglies now even if the memory itself still felt like confetti she was trying to catch. What was this gross-tasting tea _doing,_ anyway? Nevertheless, she closed her eyes again and tried to think of that night. 

She had gone down the ladder and turned to find the room lit with candles, but no Spike. Not until she heard a sound behind her and--

That was when Buffy felt the magic strike, a bright red wave that shot up from her spine to her heart and then to her head, setting her temples tingling. And then suddenly she was being pulled down, down, down, like water rushing through a tunnel, color swimming up behind her eyes until all she saw was red. 

When she opened them, she was no longer in her bedroom; instead she was standing in the basement level of Spike’s crypt--Spike’s very, very un-blown-up crypt. The edges of her vision seemed . . . fuzzy, somehow, but the room looked like it always had. There were the fat black candles on his dumpster dresser, all lined up like a jagged underbite. There were the haphazard rugs right out of evil _Masterpiece Theater_. There was the bed, with its red sheets--the sheets that felt wonderful against her skin, even if she tried to avoid them because it was easier to feel like this was an accident if the bed wasn’t involved. _I just came by for information, but if you wanted to screw me hard up against this weird sarcophagus thing, okay._

A sound came from behind her, the soft padding of feet. 

She whipped around only to have the breath knocked out of her. Because there was Spike, naked, completely naked, toweling his hair off with a black towel that had seen better days. He’d come from the tunnel where he’d rigged up a makeshift shower, and his torso glistened. Buffy could see a drop of water clinging to the sharp bone of his hip. 

He finished drying his hair, then smirked at her, his head a mess of tousled blond curls. 

“And she appears once more,” he said. 

Just like he had one year ago. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This turned into a bit of a monster, so I've decided to post the first part of the next chapter now since I'm going to be tied up with some very important Secret Santa event business in December. 
> 
> Many, many thanks to MaggieLaFey, who continues to astound me with her editing-in-a-foreign-language prowess. She is also the reason that Buffy doesn't suddenly grow four hands.

Buffy blinked once, twice, and when that wasn’t enough, several more times. But it didn’t change anything: Spike was still very much naked, and she was still very much standing in front of him, in a room she had grenaded a year ago. 

Before she could stop them, her eyes slipped down another notch. That was definitely Spike’s penis. Penis of Spike. Not fully hard, but getting there now that it had an audience. 

That, she had not blown up. 

Feeling panicked, her gaze flew up, just in time to catch Spike smirking the smirk of the recently ogled. He threw the towel to the side, where it caught on one of the lounge-lizardy lamps by the bed. 

“Come from the Doublehell, then?” he asked, eyes flicking to her chest. 

She was about to ask him how he knew when she felt the familiar itch of polyester. 

_ No _ .  _ Oh no.  _

She was wearing the striped Doublement Palace shirt and scratchy tan grandma pants she’d bought at the Goodwill after discovering  _ the smell  _ not only invaded clothing, it planted flags and set up little settlements. She’d burned the whole outfit over the summer in a pit fire, not caring about the nosey neighbor who stopped to glare or the fact it meant they’d dock her last paycheck for the unreturned shirt. But now the shirt was not only resurrected, it had a giant multicolored stain on the boob, because, she remembered, the night she’d come here, the possessed milkshake machine had spit out nothing but chocovanillaberry sludge. To top it all off, Dawn had called in the middle of it all to complain that all they had to eat in the house was half a box of congealed raisins and a frozen burrito she’d found behind the ice tray. “Well, then eat the ice burrito,” Buffy had snapped, before hanging up to deal with the next wave of demon milkshake and her pimply boss’s frown. It had all been so brutal that she’d found herself veering toward the cemetery on the way home, wanting for nothing more than to forget it all in a tangle of lips and teeth and tongue. To forget it all in the hard thrust of him moving inside her, because that was the only way she could ignore the little voice inside her insisting that she should just keep walking and walking and walking all the way into the ocean. 

“Told you a million times that place is beneath you,” Spike continued, and now it was a million and one, because--

_ Oh God.  _

She was  _ in  _ the memory. The spell had talked about “opening pathways” and “focused projection” and all sorts of gobbledygook Buffy had written off as witchy lingo, but now she understood: when it said to “choose a memory” it didn’t mean “choose a memory from the Lusty Buffy Private Fun archive,” it meant “choose a memory you want to relive, sister friend.” Had Willow known? But she would have said, wouldn’t she? 

Buffy looked to the ladder, eyes trailing up to the ceiling, where the top rungs were shrouded in that same fuzzy mist she saw lurking around the rocky outer walls. 

Her heart began to pound--she didn’t remember the lower level feeling so cramped before. Could she even leave? 

Realizing that Spike had gone oddly silent, she zeroed in on him again-- _ above  _ the waist--and found him standing where she’d left him, blue eyes intent. She must have been silent now for at least twenty seconds, which should have inspired a  _ Hellll-o?  _ or an eyebrow or something about her being off a bird, but instead he was just staring at her expectantly, as if waiting for something. 

“I’m not here for your opinion on my career choices, Spike,” Buffy blurted, her tone pure acid, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that--or, well, she had meant to say it, back  _ then _ , but not now. 

And yet the words had been there on the tip of her tongue, just waiting to spill out. 

Intended or not, they had the effect of prompting Spike back into action. 

His expression shuttered. “Then why  _ are _ you here, pet?” he said, gaze hooded as he started to slink closer. 

The brain alarms that had been ringing in Buffy’s head ratcheted up a few notches. She had the oddest sensation then, almost like she was two Buffies: One felt like fleeing--she wasn’t ready for this, hadn’t expected this, the room was too small, he was too close, she wasn’t  _ prepared _ , dammit--and yet the other, the one from before, only felt relief. Relief that he’d ditched the concerned commentary on her life for this sex-on-a-stick act, because  _ that’s _ what she came here for; if she’d wanted to feel judged, she’d have just gone home to Dawn. 

One thing was certain: both Buffies felt like a live wire, raw and exposed and sparking.

Stopping in front of her, he ran a finger along her collarbone. “Or perhaps I should start guessing?” he said, his touch trailing to the sharp orange vee of her shirt. 

She sucked in a breath. This was a memory, and yet she could feel the tip of his finger tracing her skin, could feel the blood rushing to the surface, just like it always had back then. 

“Mmm. Information?” he said, popping her top button. 

She felt frozen, caught in a conflicting swirl of past-present feelings. She wanted to leave; she wanted to feel more. 

“Help doing in some nasty?” he said, moving on to the next button, which he undid with the same casual twist. “Or perhaps . . .” His hands slipped to the third button, hovering for a long, tense moment. “Perhaps you want some nasty to do you.”

She felt the old anger swirl up then, jostling her out of her shock. 

“This was a mistake,” she said, and this time she was in full agreement with Past Buffy. Pushing him away, she turned back to the ladder. 

But before she could reach for the first rung, Spike darted in front of her to block her exit, eyes heated, and grabbed her shoulders, his thumbs pressing sharply into the tops of her breasts. “Only mistake--”

Panic swamped her then, the force of his grasp whipping her back to the bright, bright room where he’d last grabbed her like that. Before she knew what she was doing, she had punched him--hard--and he was flying into the rocky wall and landing limbs akimbo.

She braced herself for defense, for a string of curses, for him to spring up like a riled cat that had gotten kicked into the corner; but he didn’t groan, didn’t moan, just sat there blinking up at her, face strangely devoid of expression.

And that was when Buffy realized that she’d wildly gone off-script. The first time this had happened, he had darted in front of her to block her exit, yes; he had grabbed and said,  _ Only mistake is thinking you don’t show up knowing exactly how you want this to play out _ . But she hadn’t punched him into the wall. She’d hissed at him to shut up, slammed him back into the ladder, then slammed her mouth over his. Screwing on the floor later, her head perilously close to banging into the base of the dresser, she’d pressed the bruise on his back and he’d jerked and come at the same time as her. 

Buffy looked around helplessly. What was she supposed to do now? Was she supposed to pick him up and slam him against the ladder? Would that restart whatever this was? Or was it ruined? Had she ruined it? 

She looked at Spike, who continued to stare at her blankly, his eyes holding no answers. 

_ I want to start over,  _ she thought wildly, and as she did, Buffy felt something begin to tug at her spine. The blurriness at the edge of her vision began to creep in. 

“Wait--” she said, but Spike’s crypt was already disappearing, the fog creeping in until all was dark. 

*

She was alone again, back in the comforting floral confines of her mother’s bedroom, the air thick and heady with the pungent scent of the Lover’s Root. 

Gasping, she sat up, breathing hard as the real world came back to her in pieces. The scratch of the patterned comforter beneath her bare thighs. The tickle of her hair against the tops of her shoulders. The coolness of the oil, still in a line that ran between her breasts. 

She looked down to check that it was still intact, only to freeze. 

Her body was glowing. Not radioactively, all green and alien, but like she was one of those paper lanterns that someone had put a candle in. 

_ Shit _ , she thought, rolling to peer over the sides of the bed. The candles remained unlit--not that she had really figured freaking out and punching him into a wall was the “mutual satisfaction” the spell demanded. 

_ Shit, shit,  _ shit. 

It had been hard enough wrapping her mind around this when she thought it was just a self-love stroll down memory lane. Now that she understood exactly what it entailed . . .

Maybe she should call time out, take a few days and regroup now that she knew what this involved. But no, Spike didn’t have that time, and--she twisted around to check--the Lover’s Root was in mid-smolder. Not to mention the fact she couldn’t go around looking like a glow worm. 

She forced herself to lay back down. This was fine. Totally fine. 

She could do this. 

Closing her eyes, she attempted the breathing exercises Giles was always harping on about. There was no danger here; everything that happened had already happened, and as she’d just proven, the scene only continued if one followed the bouncing ball. It was like one of those singalong videos on VHS her mom used to put on when Buffy was a kid, because no one  _ really _ knew all the words to “Waltzing Matilda.” Only this was like an X-rated “Waltzing Matilda,” one featuring  _ actual _ balls and--

Buffy let out a huff; that train of thought was best derailed. This wasn’t rocket science. She just had to find a different memory, one that contained fewer things that might startle her out of it. It wasn’t like every time that she and Spike had sex began with them tossing one another into things. A lot of them had; but not all. 

Willing her muscles to relax, she focused on remembering one of those as her fingers tentatively slid back between her legs. There had been another time, in that era of grueling Doublemeat Palace shifts, when she had stopped by unannounced to find him sprawled in his chair watching some black-and-white monster movie, the volume on low. The flickering light had washed the tableau of color, and Buffy had been struck by the sudden feeling of being in a monster movie of her own. She, Godzilla, stomping in, mood black enough to level little cardboard cities; him . . . whatever monster Godzilla used to fight but now had secret sex with behind the skyscrapers. 

His shirt had been unbuttoned, she remembered, her breath beginning to hitch, and he’d left it open just enough to reveal a pale expanse of chest made even whiter by the flickering electronic light. Before Spike, she’d always thought she preferred linebacker types, their bulk making her feel girlish despite the super-strength that meant she could just as easily hackey-sack them across the room as kiss them. 

But now . . . there was something to be said for sharpness. For leanness. For a body made up of stark lines and shadows and hip bones that naturally drew the eye down, down, down to exciting places. For a body that  _ felt  _ like her equal as much as it was. For a body that never hid how much it liked her strength. 

All she’d needed to do was flick her eyes southward to make him hard, and she’d loved that, loved watching him-- 

This time, when the magic struck, shooting up her spine like it was a lit fuse, she was ready for it, and for the disorienting swirl of time and space around her. 

*

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the upper level of Spike’s crypt and once again wearing the orange-and-white uniform of Doublemeat oppression. 

Spike was in his orange chair, ten feet away, eyes fixed on the TV. This time, he was at least partially clothed. 

She let out a breath. Good. She could ease into this. 

As she approached, however, she realized that there were a few things that her mind’s eye had left out. His shirt was open, yes, revealing a smorgasbord of lickable pecs and abs and a trail of dark hair that disappeared behind his heavy belt buckle. But it had left out the detail of his glinting silver jewelry, both the ever-present necklace and the collection of rings on the hand curled around the neck of the whiskey bottle gracing the chair’s arm. 

She hated his jewelry with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, and not just because it was tacky. It was hard to look at it without thinking of the way the cool metal had felt against the softest parts of her, of the way the necklace brushed across her nipples whenever he was crawling back up her body, of the way the black-and-silver ring on his thumb dug into her hip when he was taking her from behind. 

If she was going to have a Pavlovian response to something, why oh why couldn’t it have been Gucci? 

But it didn’t matter. It was happening, this full movie montage of pawn-shop jewelry as fun and exciting sexual aid. The fact that it was happening to both Buffies only made the heat bloom more fiercely between her legs. She sucked in an audible breath. 

Spike turned his head, slowly and smoothly enough that it was clear he’d just been feigning disinterest. 

_ Stupid jerk _ .  _ I’ll show you to ignore me.  _

The echoing thought was Past Buffy’s, and so was the flickering anger mingling with arousal. They had fought the time before this, she remembered, one of those rare arguments that hadn’t ended in punch-punch-sex, but with her storming out, no sex, and not even any punching. 

Whatever it had been about, Spike was clearly still feeling the effects. “What?” he snapped, his gaze cool. 

Buffy felt the ghost of herself puff up, cycle through things she could possibly insult, from his undead lifestyle to his drinking to his hair--which was clearly the stupider among the two of them, not that hers was stupid at all, even short. But at the last second, the anger had just whooshed out of her; she couldn’t risk another night of awkward silence with Dawn back at the house, at least not without feeling his hands on her first. She couldn’t. 

So, instead, she nudged his hand with the whiskey bottle off the armrest and took a delicate seat, letting the words from the past stretch out before her like a red carpet. There was something freeing about the feeling of ceding control to the memory. 

“What’re you watching?” she asked, as a group of people in a cockpit were shaken about by a mysterious force off their radar. A few seconds later, what was clearly a toy plane some crew member had set on fire plummeted to the fake-looking rocks. 

When her query only netted silence, she twisted her body around to look at him. The coolness had been replaced with surprise. 

His scarred eyebrow quirked up. “Uh . . . called  _ The Giant Claw _ , I think.” 

She turned back to the screen. “Oh. So it’s about a flying demon?” 

“No.” His voice was low and rumbly behind her. “UFO that’s some kind of alien bird.” 

“Really? That’s lame.” When he didn’t say anything again, she looked back to find his jaw doing the twitchy thing that she’d come to realize meant the wheel was spinning when it came to what emotion would power his next remark; where oh where would it land?

“Probably why I don’t remember issuing you a ticket to come watch,” he finally said, but his tone lacked rancor. 

He hadn’t moved from his sprawl, one leg straight, the other bent, the whiskey bottle now resting on his bare stomach. As still as he was, she could see his muscles tensing, creating a delightful ripple. His abs were twitching above his belt buckle. 

“Mmm,” she said, heart starting to beat more rapidly. “I think there are better things to be doing with your time.” 

There was a long pause where he said nothing. “Really. Do tell.” 

The memory was telling her that now was the time to turn around all the way, to swing her leg over and straddle his hips in a clear signal that she was open for sexy business, but Buffy found herself resisting, the line between this moment and the next suddenly looming up like a wall of thorns. 

But no, she had to cut through it. Otherwise, she’d be right back where she started, desperately trying to find a memory. 

_ Nothing can happen here that didn’t happen before,  _ she reminded herself. And nothing that happened here was going to do any more damage to her relationship with Spike, because all that damage had already been done. This was a ghost of Spike, not Spike himself. Weirdly, this space was . . . safe. 

And so, pulse fluttering, she ceded control.

Twisting around, she straddled him, taking the whiskey bottle he’d been resting on his stomach. Raising the bottle to her lips, she took a long swig. “Bleaaagghh.” Nope. Still gross. 

Spike smiled, eyes crinkled at the corners. “Gonna be another night that ends with you woofing all over my shoes?” 

“Nah, think I’ll pass on that,” she said, then tightened her thighs against the muscles of his so she could make a show of leaning back and placing it a safe distance away on the red and gold rug. When she pulled herself back up--slowly, sinuously, thighs squeezing his for purchase again--his mouth was slightly parted, his eyes on the skin her backbend had exposed at the waist. 

His eyes flicked up. “Still waiting to hear what this better offer entails,” he said smoothly, sliding his hands to her hips and then giving a sharp tug forward so that she was pressed right on top of his growing hardness. 

_ Oh God.  _ At this moment, she wasn’t sure what Buffy the thought belonged to. 

“It entails . . .” She licked her lips. “It entails . . . Oh screw it,” she said, then swooped down and captured his mouth with her own. 

He responded to the hard kiss immediately, coiled muscles springing into action, hands sliding beneath her shirt to run up the bare skin of her back before grabbing her hips again and pushing her down onto the ridge of him even more forcefully. 

God, these kisses were a drug, always had been; a numbing drug that made every bad thought flee her head in favor of naughty thoughts about what she could do if only she had more hands. The two she had were pressed against his bare chest, fingertips digging into the meat of his pecs, his nipples hard points against her palms; but she wanted to slide one down and start undoing his belt buckle so she could wrap her fingers around his twitching length. She wanted to twine them through the soft hair at the nape of his neck and then tug his head back further, deepening the kiss. She wanted to touch every part of him all at once. She wanted to  _ consume  _ him. 

Still did. She’d thought she had lopped this part of herself off, but that had been a lie. It had retreated after the ugly end to their affair, but it hadn’t disappeared; it had just been coiled up and sleeping, waiting for something to come by and rattle its cage.

Dimly, she realized that his hands had left their survey of her skin to work at the buttons on the front of her shirt. He’d undone the top one, but the second was giving him trouble. 

“Fuck,” he said, tearing his lips away and panting. When it still proved snagged, he made as though to rip the whole front open, but she grabbed his wrist and pushed his hand back. 

“Don’t--I’ll have to buy another one,” she heard herself say, even as she desperately wished she didn’t have to follow the script, that this terrible shirt could go to its death in a tornado of buttons. Not wanting to risk kicking herself out of the memory, however, she grabbed the hem, pulled it up over her head, and threw it in the corner. When she refocused on Spike, he was smirking. 

“Pulling out all the stops today, are we?” he said, rubbing the strap of her dull cotton sports bra between his fingers. 

“Shut up,” she said, and felt her past self grapple with a little twinge of hurt, because this bra, lame as it was, proved she had woken up this morning feeling kind of okay. Still numb, of course, but able to walk what felt like the forty miles downstairs to grab this bra out of the dryer, where it had been sitting with its wrinkled compatriots since five days ago--otherwise known as the last time she woke up feeling relatively okay and had done one single load of laundry in celebration. This was what effort looked like right now, and if he didn’t see that, then maybe she’d hop off his lap and walk out . . . 

But then that would mean an end to the kisses, an end to the delicious hard pressure on her clit and all that it promised. So she tugged the bra over her head and threw it in the corner as well, delighted to find that the sight of her bare breasts could still wipe his face clean of anything except pure, undisguised lust. 

When Spike’s head dipped, his cool mouth closing around a nipple, she trembled and gripped his shoulders. 

“Oh God,” she blurted as his lips suckled and teased. Dimly, she wondered what would happen in the spell if she came at the wrong time. She didn’t think she had, but it had been so, so long and her pussy was pounding in time with the swirl of his tongue. She squirmed in his lap, trying to press herself harder against him. 

He abandoned the one breast and moved to the other, his hands grabbing her ass now, not to move her against him more forcefully but to hold her in place. She heard herself actually  _ mewl _ . 

His dark chuckle rumbled against her skin. “Is the Slayer gonna come just from me sucking on her pretty tits?” he said, then teased the hard point with a scrape of teeth. 

She gasped. “Noo-oo,” she said. 

Maybe. 

He gave another tug and she gasped again. They had never been this hard before; the one that wasn’t currently getting any attention was so puckered to feel almost painful. 

“Gonna poke my eye out,” he said, going back to lick the first one. 

Pig. She had a retort to that. It was just . . . somewhere else. 

“Should probably get hazard pay,” he continued before wrapping his mouth fully around the neglected nipple and sucking hard. 

“Shutaaaa--” she said, her fingers digging into his shoulders. “I need . . . I need . . .” 

He pulled his head back, face shadowed in the pale light of the TV. “What do you need, kitten?” 

Everything. She needed everything. 

But what she said was, “Fingers. Mouth.” 

Another chuckle, and then the next thing she knew she was being lifted and set back against the rug. On the television, a big buzzard-like thing was picking up a car . . . but then she didn’t care because he was kissing his way down her body and working at the zippers of her shoes and then the cheap metal clasp of her pants. 

With a tug, he slid them down her thighs and tossed them away into the corner. Then he did the same to her panties--thankfully with no comment this time. 

Hands on her knees, he spread her legs, the cool air of the crypt like a sudden kiss of its own on her overheated skin. Then he slid down so his face was level with her sex, his finger teasing, but not breaching her folds. 

“Fingers like . . . this?” he said, pressing forward with one finger to tease at her nub, circling it until stars shot up her spine, bowing her back. 

“Yes,” she said, breathless. She’d missed this. She’d told herself that she didn’t, but she had. It was a good thing this scene seemed to be running on auto-pilot, as she didn’t know if she could string words together otherwise. 

“Or fingers like . . . this.” He traced a wet path down to her opening, where he inserted a finger up to the hilt. 

She cried out, arching again. “Yes!” 

He slipped another finger in then crooked them both, causing her to mewl. “Now, when you say mouth . . .” 

“Put your mouth on me now, or I swear to God I’ll stake you,” she gasped. 

After another delighted chuckle, he did as she asked, fingers retreating so his hands could press her thighs apart more widely, making them brush against the rug beneath her. 

“I didn’t say move your fingers,” she said, unable to keep her hips from eagerly bumping up, aching to be filled again. 

He stroked the delicate skin in the crease of her thighs. “Mmm. Depends. Will you be a good girl and keep these spread?” 

She found herself nodding, even as her past self cringed. 

_Good girl._ She used to hate how hot it made her when he said things like that, hated more how easily he’d uncovered all sorts of little kinks and fetishes she apparently had, or in some cases created new ones. The fact that she and Spike were so simpatico when it came to sex had been, in and of itself, a constant terrible surprise. Sure, in the limited times she’d let herself entertain thoughts of what Spike would be like in bed before it had happened in that gush of violence--and those imaginings were typically followed by a disclaimer like _if I lost my mind_ or _if we had to do it to stop some great supernatural world-endage of an unspecified nature_ \--she hadn’t figured the answer to be _bad,_ not given the evidence provided by Willow’s spell or the single-minded obsession with which he flung himself at anything. But given they rarely got through a conversation without her wanting to kill him, she thought maybe there’d be some disconnect. Not to mention Spike would probably want to do all sorts of weird things that she didn’t, because, again, he was a soulless vampire. 

Turns out, Spike just made her like all the things. 

Like what he was doing with his tongue right now, swirling it inside her and then sliding it up her full length to lick and nibble at her clit. 

“Oh God,” she cried again as his fingers entered her once more, moving in and out and in and out before starting to tap, tap, tap on the spot inside that she’d never even believed was there until they’d started doing this. 

Pressure was building now, sending delightful ripples of warmth up her body. This was going to happen embarrassingly fast--had happened embarrassingly fast--she realized as her chest began to heave. 

“Go ahead, baby,” he said, his voice a rumble against her thighs. “Wanna feel you come.” 

Pressure was building, from inside and out. While his fingers remained buried deep, he had retreated to just using the tip of his tongue on the aching part of her, tracing light circles around it. 

“Oh God. Oh Spike. Oh God. Oh please, oh please, oh please, I’m gonna--” 

The orgasm hit hard, causing her to arch. Instinctively, she tried to slam her thighs closed as the feelings became intense. But he pulled his hands away and caught them before she could, keeping them firmly spread. 

Spike tskd, waiting for the largest shudders to pass before speaking. “Thought you were gonna be good. Not done yet.” 

“Wha--” she said, half-dazed, but the words kept spilling out. “I don’t think I can--oh!” 

His thumb was back on her clit, rubbing in a way that took full advantage of the ring’s coolness. Climbing to his knees, he kept the pressure on as he wiped his mouth and watched her. “You can. Look at you all flushed, perky little nips all pointed to the sky. You’re two seconds from coming again.” 

“Am no--” she started, but then he pressed down again, hard, setting off a wave of shudders that were less intense than the first round but still definitely in the “new orgasm” zone. 

Not that either Buffy was going to admit that. 

She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his surely smug expression, and also to enjoy the light, buzzy, sparking feeling that flooded through every nerve and vein and cell of her body. She felt . . . weightless.  _ If I could just stay in this moment,  _ one of them thought.  _ This moment where there is no falling-apart house, no pile of bills, no friends sneaking concerned glances at one another when they think I’m not looking.  _

When she opened her eyes, limbs still feeling like happy little floating jellyfish, Spike was shrugging out of his shirt and throwing it into the mysterious, fuzzy black corner that had swallowed all of their clothing. 

He was working on his belt now, and she turned her head to the side, overcome by twin waves of bashfulness. Somehow, watching him undress felt more intimate than shredding the clothes off him herself, or finding him naked and preening in the first place. 

The movie was still running, an old-timey voice narrating as the giant bird tore apart a bland city while people ran and yelled.  _ Will it ever stop its orgy of destruction?  _ the voice intoned. 

There was a loud  _ clank _ , and then a muttered curse. In the process of pulling off his boots and jeans, Spike had clearly kicked over his bottle of whiskey. 

The screen zeroed in on a teenage girl who looked like Dawn--or Dawn if she’d been attacked by ten thousand hot rollers. That morning her little sister had asked her when her shift ended, wanting to maybe watch a movie, and Buffy had lied, telling her two hours later just to buy herself a little time afterwards. A little time to come here and do this. 

_ I should be at home,  _ she thought.  _ I should be at home watching a movie with her, not watching a movie here, naked on the floor of Spike’s crypt, waiting for him to fuck me.  _

She shook her head--no, that thought was the old one; she wanted to be here, so she could finish the spell. 

A very naked Spike was now kissing his way up her body, starting at her ankle, moving to her calf, her inner thigh, and now to the planes of her stomach. Soon, he was fully on top of her, blocking her view of the screen. 

Her muscles tensed, brain suddenly screaming at her to push him off. It was getting hard to discern what timeline the thoughts were coming from. 

After kissing her neck a few times, Spike pulled back. His face was largely in shadow, but she could see his eyes flicking over her expression with uncertainty even as his cock jutted insistently against her bare thigh. 

“Slayer?” he asked. 

She sucked in a deep breath, trying to shake off the kneejerk reaction to the feeling of being pinned and caged by him, because that wasn’t what was happening here. And it wasn’t what Past Buffy had felt, either, because she could feel that too--not that those feelings were so great. Past Buffy was impatient now to get this over with. 

After a few long moments, Buffy managed to get her nervousness to settle, and she let the scene continue, ignoring the dread that was building in her stomach at her past self’s sudden detachment. There was something about this night . . . something she was forgetting. 

“Buf--”

Sliding a hand behind his neck, she let herself pull his head down for a rough kiss that was more a clash of teeth. With the other, she grabbed his ass and encouraged him forward, nails digging into the firm muscle as she moaned in the deep way that she knew he liked. 

After a few moments, he pulled back, panting, eyes glazed enough that she knew she didn’t have to worry anymore about uncomfortable questions. Reaching between their bodies, he took himself in hand, fingertips brushing her thighs. 

And then he was sliding into her. 

_ Oh.  _

Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back. She hadn’t thought she’d ever feel this again. Honestly, a part of her was convinced she had misremembered how good he felt inside her, that it was the result of the horny-depressed sex-monster glasses she’d been sporting back then, because how could something that ended so badly have ever felt  _ good _ ? 

But no. It felt good. 

_ It feels good _ , she thought, arching beneath him and grabbing at his butt now with both hands, pulling him deeper.

“Faster,” she murmured. 

He hissed and then dropped onto his elbows again, nipping at her neck. “So hot,” he said between kisses. “So bloody fucking hot,” he said and then began to move. 

The first few thrusts were slow, which Buffy appreciated; if this was going to be the last time she felt this, she wanted it to last. Wanted to enjoy his little grunts in her ear, even wanted to enjoy the butterfly touch of the stupid necklace as it brushed against her lips and chin as he drove into her. But she felt her past self’s annoyance start to flutter about like a trapped moth. 

She wanted this hard and fast and over with, before the regret started to really burn. Because it would. The coals had already caught fire. 

But Spike continued to move with languid strokes, whispering a sweetly perverse litany of praise in her ear. 

“Yeah, baby, squeeze me just like that. So hot. So tight. Could drown in your quim.”

She turned her head and bit at his bicep, hard. Biting usually made him come fast. 

“Christ!” He grunted and jerked, but then stopped entirely, which was the opposite of what she wanted. 

She squirmed up against him, feeling him pulse and twitch inside of her. She felt her past self debate taking control, just flipping him over, pinning his wrists and riding him into oblivion--after, all she’d need to do was hop off, grab her clothes, and escape into the night. 

Before she could, however, he pinned her wrists and levered himself up, out of biting range. 

Then he thrust forward again and pulled out, slowly enough that she felt the full drag of his cock. 

“Faster,” she panted. 

“Look at you,” he said as he drove into her again, eyes suddenly bright and full of emotion. “Love seeing you wrapped around my cock.”

Her body tensed at the L-word.  _ Jesus, not the love stuff _ , came the ghost thought.  _ Not now.  _

He dropped closer to kiss and nip at the old scars on her neck. 

“Love how your blood kicks up when I’m at your neck,” he said when she moaned, before giving the spot a little lick and starting to jack his hips faster. “Love your gasps, love your--oh God, Buffy.” 

She closed her eyes, gripped by warring feelings. She remembered what came next now. 

“Fuck,” he said. “Love you. God, love you so much. Love you ’til--” 

Freeing her hands from his grip, she felt herself grab his chin, pushing his head up so he was forced to look at her. 

She knew what she was supposed to say. Felt it like a drop of poison on the tip of her tongue.  _ Will you just shut up about the love thing and finish already? I have to get home.  _

He had gone still above her, but after a few seconds he shook his chin away from her grip and looked at her intently. 

They’d come to the end of the memory. That was the last thing he’d done before she’d said it. If she didn’t say it, they would never get to the next part of the memory. 

“Will . . .” she started, but her throat was dry. She didn’t want him to shut up about the love thing anymore, she realized. 

It had been cruel to ask.

The fog at the edges of the room was beginning to close in, and still she couldn’t force out the sentence in full.

_ I want to start over.  _ The thought was out before she could suck it back. 

The fog swept in. The television blinked out, and then the chair, and then everything. The last thing she saw was his blue gaze, waiting for her to cut him down. 

With a gasp, she sat up. 


End file.
